World on Fire
by Basilton
Summary: What would happen if Operation Meteor dropped the colonies as planned? A tale of love and radiation poisoning at the end of the world. Complete! Rated for violence and swearing.
1. Chapter 1: Genesis

Heavyarms. From his earliest days as a nameless mechanic for the Barton Foundation, this towering machine of war had captured his imagination. His own life, the lives of others; they all meant nothing to him now. There was only Heavyarms, pure in design and completely focused in purpose. It was perfect; there was no hate, no malice in this machine, no emotion other than the awe it invoked in those that viewed it.

When most children his age were reluctantly at school or playing with friends, fourteen year old No-name was learning all the intricacies of the machine, entirely ambivalent to the ultimate purpose of destruction. It had not been about the end goal to No-name, just the perfection of the machine itself. Until the day the pilot of the machine, the real Trowa Barton, had been shot. Shot by a mechanic and the man who would become his trainer, Doctor S. He had taken on the name and role of Trowa Barton on that day, becoming the good doctor's weapon of rebellion against the Earth. It was a rebellion he cared little about, like Heavyarms he was just a tool to be used.

All that mattered was that he be allowed to pilot the machine and finally he had the opportunity. The original Trowa Barton had been part of a massive plan of genocide, to drop one of the orbiting colonies down to Earth, not only killing all those living in the colony but everyone on Earth as well with the colony's entry causing massive ecological damage to the planet. So others on the project had killed that man and now, here he was in his stead, drifting in space ten thousand miles above the Earth and waiting for an innocuous series of numbers that would tell him that Operation Meteor had begun.

Trowa grabbed the dimming lantern from its perch on one of the many maintenance panels that covered Heavyarms, winding around the stiff dynamo with an annoyed grunt until the damned thing brightened enough so that he could see what he was doing. Not that there was much to illuminate in this dead husk of a spacecraft, he could count the inventory of the transport on one hand. One towering machine of death, check. One command console, check. One mattress, check. One inebriated teenager going insane of boredom, check.

The only thing that had made the first weeks tolerable was because he spent half the time drunk, but then the vodka ran out. He'd starting servicing Heavyarms once, twice, then when four times seemed too many he started checking the release mechanism that would propel both him and his mobile suit into Earth's atmosphere. While on that project he only just began realise that all the systems were powered down to avoid the transport being picked up on sensors, so he wouldn't be able to boot up the computers to check that everything was working after his little tinkering session. Sessions. Weeks. Wasn't the definition of insanity doing something over and over again and expecting a different result each time? Not the actual definition of course, but it was catchy enough and it fit.

Pulling his head out of the maintenance panel, Trowa grabbed a torque wrench and in his frustration threw it at the wall, the tool bouncing off the wall of his prison with a lonely and sad 'clang'. The thought that he would go stir crazy had never occurred to him when they were planning this stage of the mission, he had always considered himself a very patient person. Certainly it would surprise any that knew him that the quiet boy would be so restless, but all his life he had been doing something, fixing or fighting but never fidgeting. The concept of boredom had not been introduced to Trowa Barton's life, and to his surprise he found it did not sit well.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Trowa's heart jumped a little as the computer bathed the otherwise dim transport in a pale blue glow. Closing and locking the maintenance hatch on Heavyarms' leg, he drifted over to the incoming message.

42 95 27

That wasn't the code he was expecting. Furrowing his brow, he opened up the drawer next to the computer and pulled out the codebook.

*

"Hey Howie!" Duo called out as he strolled along the deck of the massive ship, "Have you found those new targets yet?" He had ignored orders (Duo preferred to think of it as "reinterpreting") to stay in orbit and had hitched a ride with a civilian transport down to Earth. Another one of his Sweeper contacts had introduced him to Howard, the owner of the carrier and someone who was pretty high up in the Sweeper organisation. Howard had been sympathetic to either Duo or to his cause – he wasn't sure which one it was at the moment, and there was definitely something the old guy was holding back – and had offered to let Duo use his ship as a base of operations, including help with repairs and parts. Since Howard was allegedly a genius engineer, he was also hoping he could wrangle a few upgrades.

"A few," answered the grey haired man, who had so far seemed to be perpetually clad in a Hawaiian shirt and board shorts, despite it being the middle of winter. "Mainly just refuelling stations, but hitting them would make it impossible to deploy suits in the region to search for you."

"Nice work for an old guy." Duo laughed and gave Howard a wink, the gesture returned only by a neutral look over the top of his sunglasses. "I'm going to head back to 'Scythe. Put in the data and I'll plan my first strike."

Howard just sighed and shook his head as he watched the youth go.

*

Landing a week early had its advantages, the best of which was having time to make a few more… luxurious modifications to the mobile suit. Not only had he managed to fit the chair with some rather expensive and very soft leather, but the cockpit was now housing two small fridges – packed to the brim of course with some delicious sugar filled drinks.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Duo stared blankly at the little light flashing red on his console. It was the Master Caution Alarm, but what the hell could it be warning about now? He fired the Gundam into life, bringing all the systems online just as the first shock-wave hit.

It was invisible, a rippling and churning line in the sea the only visible evidence of the destructive wave that slammed into the side of the carrier, bending steel and breaking glass as the unseen force tore through the bowels of the ship. Duo clung on for dear life as Deathscythe capsized, knocking him about the cockpit like a ragdoll as the uncontrolled suit fell gracelessly to the ground. The force of the fall ripped Duo's grip from the chair, falling uselessly until his head smashed into one of the side displays, leaving his body in a growing pool of blood and display fluid.

*

"Do... copy... arms... repeat... Wing... copy..."

Heero Yuy stared at the command console... the computer readout was usually just a simple display, but now all sorts of readings and graphs were popping up in the task manager as the computer frantically tried to process the message. He was picking up an encrypted, weak transmission that was being directed at him from somewhere in Earth orbit. It couldn't be Dr. J, from the protocol they had established he would only send messages through text, and the scattered bits of conversation put it at a young – about his age – male voice. He had a choice here, his standing orders were to remain electronically silent, but this was definitely directed at him. He imagined he even heard "Wing" in the transmission. There was only one way to find out: tapping a few commands into the keyboard, he extended the aerial of the transport and boosted the signal.

"Please respond. Gundam Wing, this is Gundam Heavyarms. Do you copy? Repeat. This is Gundam Heavyarms."

"This is Wing." Heero replied into the radio, weary about giving away too much information. He had not been told of any other Gundams, but then again he had always been told very little by J. It would certainly make tactical sense to send more than one operative on this operation, especially if they were isolated and independent.

"Wing, have you had any reports from your controller?" Came the even reply. There was something that seemed… no, it wasn't familiar; but there was a certain business-like quality that resonated with Heero.

"Negative, Heavyarms." Heero responded, "No contact."

"I received a 'Hold, retreat and regroup' order along with a list of four other Gundams and their secure channels. I'm not sure how to take it."

Heero ran his fingers down the row of buttons on the side of the console, a nervous gesture if nothing else. His mind was busy playing through the conversation, vigilantly searching for any hidden meaning or signs of threat. "Did the message say anything else?" Heero queried, concluding that there must be something that this Heavyarms was hiding. If he had received such a mysterious message he wouldn't take the risk to contact the people on it.

"There was… a message from my controller." The voice uttered after a pause, undeniably shaken. "I'm uploading it to you now."

Wordlessly, Heero accepted the transmission, noting with a certain amount of apprehension that all the security codes were valid.

_This is Doctor S. If you have received this message, then it is likely that I and the other scientists working with me are dead. If they are not, then you are to take orders from any one of my colleagues. If you receive no contact immediately after this message, you are to assume they are dead and are to carry on our fight._

_As you are likely now aware, you are not the only pilot in this operation. It was a heavily guarded secret in the event that any one of our projects was discovered. In the absence of orders from myself or my colleagues, you are to co-ordinate with the other pilots in your missions. This transmission will contain the secure communication codes to contact them._

The transmission stopped abruptly, reinforcing that this Doctor S was just as insistent on keeping a facade of cloak and dagger bullshit as J was. Heero wouldn't be shedding tears for any of them, it was not as if J would have shed any for his own death.

Turning back to the communications console, Heero replied to his new found ally. "Heavyarms, do you have a plan?"

*

The past five minutes had been a blur to the young Quatre Winner. He had been playing his violin, the gentle strains of the instrument filling the small transport when he was interrupted by an alarm from his communications equipment.

"I don't know." Quatre sighed, shaking his head as he conversed through the radio. "I don't have a way of contacting my controller." He ran a hand through his disheveled bangs, worrying over the direction the conversation was going. If H had been captured or killed, could that lead back to his family? Should he go and help them, or would showing up with a mobile suit only make things worse?

"We have to decide on our own." The voice of the pilot that had identified himself as Heavyarms came through. Both of the other pilots had fairly emotionless voices, but this one seemed... slurred? "We haven't been able to reach Deathscythe or Shenlong, so it's three of us for now. We should land in Western Europe, close to Switzerland."

"Middle East." Quatre cut in, not allowing Heavyarms to finish his plan. "I have contacts there that can help us hide, it will be easier for us to strike quickly and evade pursuit in the desert. They can get us access to fuel and repairs."

"I agree with Sandrock." Wing commented, causing Quatre to gain a childish smile as his plans were taken seriously. "The Middle East isn't well patrolled and is close to supply lines from Africa."

"Middle East it is, then." Heavyarms relented, "I hope your contacts are trustworthy."


	2. Chapter 2: Numbers

Duo rolled over and vomited, adding his bile to the large pool of display fluid and blood. You would've thought that the amount of times he had been violently knocked unconscious, he would be used to the horrid moment of waking back up.

"Ohhhh… my head." He moaned, clutching at the side of his skull only to find his precious hair covered in wet, sticky gunk. Blood, he figured, pulling his hand back in front of his face. At least, mostly blood – it looked too diluted, and strangely crystallised. What the hell had happened? Oh, that's right. He'd been working on Deathscythe when the alarm went off and the whole world went suddenly upside down.

Well, there was only one way to find out what had happened and with a groan, he pulled himself up to the console and flicked on the outside cameras.

"Jesus… Howard?" Duo gasped in shock as the screen flickered to life. Two figures lay motionless just in front of Deathscythe's cameras, each steeped in a pool of red. One was unmistakably Howard, his loud shirt giving away the identity of the old man, the other was a mechanic Duo had seen working on Deathscythe a few times, but he had never found out his name.

"_C'mon, open up dammit! OPEN UP!" The mechanic slammed his fist on the hatch to the fallen mobile suit, cursing at the pilot inside. "I know you're in there you fucker, open the hatch!"_

"_Don't." A soft voice sounded from behind him as levered the cover away from the access panel. Howard. "We're dead already. Open that up, you kill him as well."_

"_Get back!" The mechanic screamed in frenzy, drawing a gun from his jacket and leveling it at Howard. "I'm not dying here."_

"_You are." Howard stated levelly, inching slowly towards the mechanic. "We all are, and if you open that hatch, you're killing him as well. The radiation–" He fell mid-sentence as the mechanic shot, the bullet ripping through his chest with a feeble spray of blood and soft gurgle as Howard collapsed to the ground. Looking down at his own gun in shock, the mechanic stepped back, pressing his back against the cold metal of the Gundam behind him. Fingers uncurling, he dropped the gun to the floor, the sharp clink of metal hitting concrete breaking the eerie silence that had fallen over the hanger. With small, shaking breaths he composed himself, turning back to the access panel and levering the last piece of casing off the keypad._

_Overriding the hatch controls was a trivial task when you knew the machine you were working on. The access panel was always getting shot out or blown up during battle, so it was required to be easy to override. Splitting up the fail-safe wires and grouping up the assorted wires by colour, he started tracing the various connections when he was suddenly hit with a blinding pain as a screwdriver jammed into his neck, driving through the soft flesh into his windpipe until all he could was gurgle and clutch uselessly at his neck while his blood poured freely around his fingers._

_The mechanic turned in horror and disbelief to face his killer, Howard who was beyond all reason standing, his usual Hawaiian shirt soaked in the blood that was still seeping from his bullet wound. The last thing he remembered was Howard pushing him to the ground where he lay helplessly, watching behind fading eyes as the older man stripped the fail-safe wires, shorting the access panel and sealing the suit closed._

Duo pulled hard on the door release, jamming it down ever harder when the only response was an annoying warning buzz. "C'mon you bitch." Duo swore under his breath, still struggling with the lever. "Open!" he yelled, slamming the lever back into place in frustration. His eyes flicked back to the screen, the computer should tell him if there was a problem and glitches weren't exactly hard to override. His fingers flicking awkwardly over the controls – it was fucking hard typing when the cockpit was on its side – he brought up the logs.

Door release denied. Cause: Radiation detected: 24Sv/hr. Warning: Tampering with external access panel. Failsafe engaged.

Damn. The two warnings were easy enough to override, but that was a lethal amount of radiation. Five minutes out there could kill him without a radiation suit, and he didn't happen to keep one in his Gundam. Luckily there was no report of any radiation in the cockpit – the whole thing was shielded so much it could survive a nuclear meltdown.

Bracing himself, he grabbed the movement controls on the chair and began the rather difficult process of righting the mobile suit while not being strapped into the chair. The most difficult part of all was the tipping point, where he had to make sure that the suit tipped over to stand on its legs and not too far to fall on its face on the other side, all while gravity was making him dangle off the chair. With a thunk the suit managed to keep itself standing up, throwing Duo over the armrest to land uncomfortably upside down in the chair.

"Well, fuck." Duo swore under his breath as he did a little spider-climb to get the right way up in the seat. He strapped himself back in, not wanting to be taken by surprise from another shock-wave again. Dialling up the communications system, he paused, thinking of what to say for a moment.

"Is anyone there? Please respond." He decided to keep it conservative; there was no telling what was happening when there were two bodies lying dead under him. He knew the ship was powered by a nuclear reactor of some sort, so if someone had sabotaged it… it would explain both the radiation and the violence on the deck. "Please respond," Duo repeated once an adequate amount of time had passed. "What's happened to the ship?"

"Kid?" The voice over the radio was uncertain and ragged. "Is that you?"

"Hello?" Duo replied. "What's happening?"

"I dunno kid. There was this big flash over the land and then we got hit with the shock-wave. The whole coast looks like it's on fire. We've been trying to send out a mayday, but there's no response. There's radiation everywhere, if we don't get medics out here soon, it's going to be too late." The voice on the other end of the line paused for a moment, as if he was thinking. "Kid, were you in your suit when it hit?"

"Yeah," Duo volunteered, not sure how much information he could divulge. Of course, he was in a heavily armoured nearly indestructible suit with a large amount of firepower. He could probably take a few risks. "Yeah, I was in it. The suit fell over and I hit my head, got knocked out cold."

"You better stay in it, kid. You've got a better chance than us out here." The voice paused again, followed by the barely audible sounds of a whispered conversation in the background. "Hey, kid. Your suit's got better equipment than we have up here on the bridge. Think if we give you access you could help us out?"

Duo thought for a moment about the offer. It was potentially risky, even though they were giving him access and not the other way around. With any connection though, there was always risk. "Alright. What do you want me to do?" Duo conceded. The crew of Howard's ship had always seemed trustworthy enough, and if he was going to get any information he was going to need to work with him.

"The radiation is killing our sensors up here. We can't leave the bridge because it's the only adequately shielded place on this part of the ship. We want you to do a fly by and check out what's happening, if possible throw out a mayday on our behalf." Duo gritted his teeth, the other man was likewise hesitant in the asking. Placing a mayday signal would be putting himself at risk, if a military vessel responded he would have to hide himself and possibly lose contact with the carrier.

"Alright, I'll do it." Duo flicked the 'magic' switches on the headboard, firing up the main engines with a satisfying roar. Carefully manoeuvring the suit out of the hanger, he jammed the throttle forward, launching Deathscythe into clear flight over the Mediterranean waters.

The guy on the bridge was right: the whole northern coastline seemed to be on fire, that or the countryside was being swept by black tornadoes. Considering his first targets were in Italy, the ship must be off the Italian coastline. He could bring up a pretty detailed map on his screen, but the radiation was still wreaking havoc with the GPS and to get a lock on the satellites he was going to have to go higher. Making sure his thermal scythe was armed in case he was attacked, he gunned the engines and brought Deathscythe past the first few low hanging clouds.

Good, he was getting a better reading now, just east of Sicily. There was a fairly large Alliance military base stationed on the mainland, it was the supply lines to that base he was planning on disrupting. If there was a large nuclear attack on the base, then that would explain –

He was cut off by a notice telling him that someone had been broadcasting to his private, secured signal. They had long since stopped the message, but there was still an open invitation to communicate. He quickly sent back a response saying he was ready for radio contact; hopefully this was G ready to explain why he'd decided to nuke Italy.

"Gundam Deathscythe, this is Gundam Heavyarms. Do you copy?" That definitely wasn't G.

"This is Deathscythe." Duo responded, already trying to trace the source of the broadcast. He manoeuvred himself into position for a freefall dive, if anything seemed suspicious, he needed to be able to bug out at a moment's notice. "Are you going to explain to me why Italy was just nuked?"

"Nuked?" The voice responded, only the barest hint of curiosity evident. "What do you mean, nuked?"

"I mean fire, explosions, the whole nine yards." Duo responded, rubbing the back of his head as a small reminder of what had happened. "I got knocked on my ass by a shock-wave, there's radiation everywhere and I can only tell where Italy is because of the giant cloud of smoke."

"Deathscythe, I received a transmission stating that our controllers were dead and that we were to join together as a contingency." _Great_, thought Duo as the voice droned on, _I just told him a country was wiped off the map and he doesn't even blink? Who the hell is this guy?_ "I have met up with two other pilots, you would make our fourth. Have you been exposed to any of the radiation? Are you injured?"

_Oh, a touch of concern?_ "Nah, no radiation, I was in my suit at the time. Got knocked around a little but it's no big deal." Duo straightened out the controls of Deathscythe, pulling the machine straight up as he just realised where the broadcast must have been coming from. "Are you still in space?"

"Affirmative, Deathscythe. We will all be landing in Jordan, close to the Palestine border. We have safe haven and contacts nearby. Will you be able to rendezvous?"

Duo kept silent for a few moments as he worked out the implications through his head. It was on the other side of the Mediterranean and while it would not be an issue for him in Deathscythe, he could not just abandon the crew on Howard's ship to die out there. With that reminder of his immediate mission, he keyed into the emergency broadcast system, preparing to send out the ships mayday.

"_godthere'sfireeverywHELPhere!peopledyingwhat'shappening?fire!"_

Duo could only listen to the ear destroying combination of static and screaming for a few seconds before he switched the radio off. It had been a likely outcome, but in the wake of such a disaster there would be no help spared for their ship. "Heavyarms, I was stationed on a ship that was hit with the blast. I need to get the crew to safety, but after that I will join you. Give me an hour to get them to Greece and I'll phone you back, k?"

"Affirmative, Deathscythe. We'll keep orbit until you respond."

That conversation over, Duo jammed the controls forward to begin his freefall dive. Deploying the large wings on Deathscythe's back, he yanked back on the joystick, pulling Deathscythe up into a curved dive that would slingshot him within sight of the Grecian coast in a matter of minutes.

"Hey, bridge." Duo thumbed open the radio channel as he fought with the controls, keeping himself in a steady glide as the cockpit threatened to shake apart. "Emergency channels are flooded, I'm going to scout out Greece, maybe Turkey, see if they can take you into port. Set a course there, fast as possible, I'll have news in a few minutes."

"Copy that, kid..." The reply was bathed in the static of background radiation, three words being all that Duo could hear. Taking his thumb off the communicator, he let the static die out just as he was approaching the visible range of Greece. He couldn't see the land yet, but already he knew what had happened.

Scattered plumes of pitch black smoke were rising up into the atmosphere, little flagpoles denoting the areas that Duo knew were Greece's major ports. He drove forward, cursing his luck as he pushed the engines faster and faster, the deafening blast of the main engines washing out noise even within the sealed cockpit. The coast was coming up fast; the cameras blurring under the speed until he could no longer make out land, the screen a wash of blue and orange and black. Even from the struggling resolutions of the screen, it was obvious: the Aegean was on fire, all the way to Turkey.

Yanking the controls around in his frustration, Duo killed the throttle and set himself back into a tight turn back to the carrier. There would be no help in Greece or beyond, no one to send a helping hand when the disaster in their own backyard was this immense. Emergency units from all over Europe would descend on the Mediterranean, but it would be too late for Howard's crew.

Wiping a stray tear from his face, Duo opened the radio channel back up. If there was any hope for these people, it was with his... comrades in space.

"Deathscythe?" Before he could speak, there came a soft voice that he couldn't place. It wasn't the person he had talked to before.

"Yeah, this is Deathscythe." He took a steadying breath, hoping that his first impression of his fellow pilots had been off. "I ran out of luck. Greece is gone... just gone. This place we're going, can it handle refugees?"

"Greece..." Came the single reply, a rising note of panic well entrenched even in that one word. "FUCK! Greece! Deathscythe... one hundred million. A hundred million and that's only what you've seen. What... what's happening, Deathscythe?"

Duo stumbled, hit not just by the numbers but the sheer emotion in that voice. When he saw the fires on the land he was not struck by despair for the people who lived there, but for the assistance they would be unable to provide the people he knew.

"Colony drop." Duo breathed, hardly aware that his voice was still transmitting through the radio.

"What?" The voice was uncertain, surprised by the barely audible reply. "You know what's happening? Tell me!"

"The original Project Meteor... it was supposed to drop a colony from orbit, wiping out human life... like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. The Gundams were built to... clean up afterwards." Duo just kept on talking, afraid that if he stopped his brain would catch up with his mouth and reality would just come crashing down on him. "But they weren't supposed to. They decided they wouldn't. They said they wouldn't.

"It doesn't fit." Heavyarms' calm voice interrupted before the other boy had a chance to reply. "I saw the plans for the colony drop. It would block out the sun – this... fire, radiation. Everything points to a local nuclear attack."

Duo could feel his breathing slowing down, averting what could have turned into a full blown panic attack. "Yes, well... you're right." Still, the guy's calm was unnerving. "Look, whatever it is, these people still need help."

"I'll talk to the Maguanacs. They can take them in." The soft spoken boy came back on, finally giving Duo some hope. There was still his new 'family' aboard the Sweeper ship to think about, and though he had barely known them a week, he couldn't let them down when they needed him. He had been accepted into the Sweeper family – and it was a family in the truest sense of the word – and they were counting on him. Pushing Deathscythe into a freefall dive, Duo aimed his fall towards the ship and tried to think of what he could say to the guys on the bridge without crying.

"Hey kid, welcome back. Got any news?" The radio greeted him as he approached. The radiation must have cleared significantly in the past hour if he was able to hear them this far out.

"No good news. I dunno how to tell you this, guys." Duo sighed, his voice already cracking.

"Hey, what's going on kid? You don't sound too good."

"Greece... that whole area. It's gone too." Duo managed before becoming too choked up to continue. He cleared his throat and pressed on.

"Holy shit, kid. You better be kidding me."

"I wish, dammit. I wish I was. I'll give you a report when I land, but I got some intel on a bunker that may be able to take in survivors. Start heading to Jordan." Duo ran his fingers through his bangs, not believing how childish he sounded to his own ears.

The radio went quiet for several minutes. Duo had to remember not to try and press them on this, he had to give them some time. When the transmission finally came back, the voice was a lot softer.

"I know this is your first time on Earth, kid. But Jordan's landlocked. Can't get there on a boat."

"Just get as close as possible. We can land at Israel or Palestine, right? I'll try to figure something out for when we get there."

Approaching the carrier, Duo brought Deathscythe up into a gentle swing, arcing slightly above the landing bay before letting gravity slowly get the better of the engines and pull the suit down into the hanger.

"I'm in. Is there anything you need me to do?" Duo queried, hooking back into the internal communications.

"Just sit tight for the moment, kid. Some of the guys that were working on the engines found some radiation suits down there, so they're going around trying to help everyone. Luckily most of the people in the quarters were shielded pretty well, but some of the doses could still be lethal. I'll throw you the medics report if you can pass it on to that base so they know what to expect."

"How long will it take you to get to the shore?" Duo asked, already typing out a report to send along to the bridge.

"Two day, usually. That's going pretty fast. Full speed all the way, maybe a day and a half. But it'll be a rough journey."

"Well, we'll have to get used to it. I'll scout the area ahead when we're a day out, so we can see what the landing's like. If there's too much radiation, then we're going to have to find some other way of transporting everyone. Get back to me if you have any ideas, but for now I'm going to try to get some sleep. It's been a rough day."

Duo flicked off the communications system before they could get a reply in, powering down all the systems shortly after and leaving him in complete darkness and solitude in the cockpit. He had trained for hopeless situations and when the shit hit the fan all you could do was keep going.

Still, the emotional train wreck had taken its toll, and his entire body was already exhausted. Reclining his chair all the way back, Duo covered his eyes and just tried to stop thinking.


	3. Chapter 3: Exodus

It had not been an easy day. Forty people – nearly a third of the crew – had contracted lethal radiation poisoning. Although they were still walking and talking, the unspoken truth was they were living on borrowed time, just waiting for the end to come. All they could be given were painkillers while they waited, and it was no surprise that there were many 'accidental' overdoses. It would certainly be a more pleasant way to go.

More than a few of the crew had taken the news of their fate much better than expected, organising themselves to do the jobs that were too dangerous for the survivors, or would expose them to too much radiation. It was this act of selflessness that Duo would always remember from his time on the ship, men and women condemned to die yet still fighting to help those who could survive.

Some were not so noble however, and dealing with the two bodies that were lying by Deathscythe was easily the most painful experience of the whole journey. He had managed to view footage from the events and even without sound it was easy to deduce what had happened. The nameless mechanic had been trying to break into Deathscythe, only to be interrupted by Howard. Howard ended up getting shot, but not before stabbing the bastard in the neck. It had just made Duo respect the old coot even more. He could hardly imagine G stabbing someone with a screwdriver while sporting a bullet wound.

The body of the mechanic had been thrown overboard during the cleanup of the ship, but Duo had insisted that Howard's body be kept for a proper burial. He had deserved at least that.

"Hey, kid." The sudden crackle of the radio startled Duo from his nap. He had been napping more and more often, it was impossible to get a good night's sleep in that pilot chair and it usually left him sore and tired during the day. Rubbing his eyes back to the bleary gloom of his cockpit, he lazily raised a hand up to flick a switch on the dash, opening up the comm channel.

"Yeah?" He replied, still not fully awake.

"We're here; at least, we're by the shore. Don't feel like running her aground just yet, so try and get into contact with your friends and we'll see how this transport option goes." The voice over the radio was Brian, one of the two bridge officers that he'd been talking to over the past few days and the one that had initially asked for Duo's help. He liked the guy, despite never having seen his face and he hoped that Brian wouldn't be one of the many that would inevitably succumb to the radiation that had already taken so many of the ships crew.

"Alright, I'll contact them. Deathscythe out." The plan, as far as Duo was aware, was that each pilot would land their transport as close to the ship as possible, keeping the transport through re-entry instead of just dumping it into space. Duo would then help them carry the transport back and with a bit of retrofitting from the ships engineers, the Gundams would carry the survivors in the shielded transports.

"Sandrock, Heavyarms, Wing. This is Deathscythe." Duo called out over his long range radio. Over the last day the radiation had decreased significantly. While you still wouldn't want to be caught out in it for too long, it was no longer interfering with communications.

Or maybe it was – Duo gave the comm panel a good smack before trying again. "Sandrock, Heavyarms, Wing. This is Deathscythe." Nothing. Not even static.

Hoping his communications system wasn't down, Duo was ready to turn the engines on, to fly out once again to get a clear signal.

"......Deat....the?" The short message, drowned in a sea of static came through. "...rock... early... landing... entered early... atmo... five minutes..."

Duo leaned back in the chair, making sure that he saved the recording of the transmission. It took him a while before he could piece together the words, but it was plainly obvious that they had already started to enter the atmosphere, something that would easily drown out their communications system.

"Hey, Brian?" Duo sent into the internal communications system. "I got a hold of them. Looks like they've come in a bit early. Should land in 5 minutes or so."

"Alright, kid. You better get out there, who knows where they'll end up landing. Good luck." The transmission had an aura of unspoken urgency about it. They knew that to waste time in getting anyone medical treatment was to risk their lives. Duo was painfully aware of this fact as well, and wasted no time in leaving the hanger, scouting out the best position to see three balls of fire in the night sky.

*

Floating in space all alone should be a quiet, restful time. But for Quatre Winner, it was anything but. While normally Rashid would do anything that Quatre had asked of him, he had been firmly set against taking in refugees, arguing that while he would be happy to take in Quatre and maybe one or two other pilots, he was not willing to risk the people in the bunker, nor the limited food and water they had.

Of course, Quatre had not been able to say "no" to the people on the ship asking for asylum, so he had told them that they would be accepted into the Maguanac's underground base. It had been a day of intense worry and debate over the issue, during which time Quatre hadn't slept, not knowing how he could tell Duo, or the people on the ship that he had lied and they would not be accepted after all. During those moments, it felt like he was killing the people himself, keeping him awake and staring at the ceiling of his dull transport, wondering if Rashid would feel the same way about leaving these people out to die.

Fortunately it seemed that Rashid shared his worry, assuring Quatre that he would let them in – on the condition that they were subjected to a full quarantine. Quatre had been so relieved at the news that he wished he was already down there so he could hug the giant of a man. But that was not the only issue he had to deal with, and soon he had to wrap his head around the problem of transporting the survivors hundreds of kilometres through Palestine, Israel and Jordan before they would get to the base. Despite many hours of thinking, he could not come up with a better plan than dragging the transports full of people behind their Gundams.

Yet despite all the progress he had made, when the time came for the pilots to drop out of orbit he was second guessing himself – what if Rashid was right, that taking in these people would kill the people on the base as well. What if he couldn't save them anyway? The only comfort on his way down was that he still firmly believed that he would rather die trying to save these people rather than live knowing that he let them die.

*

Trowa had very few doubts himself on the way down. All that mattered was the now, Sandrock could worry himself to death about what the future would bring. For now, he would survive and the more allies he had in this goal the easier it would be. It had been a comforting thought, knowing that there were other pilots like him on the same mission. The news that had accompanied it was less than comforting, but at least he had allies, and Trowa always felt more at home when he was in a 'pack', to use the animal terminology. While he rarely would speak or socialise with his comrades, their physical presence was a welcome support.

It was this fact that had made the past five days so insufferable for him. He was physically alone on the transport and the only company he had was to talk over the radio, something he was not prepared – in every sense of the word – to do. So the past few days had been spent in restless boredom, trying to help with ideas for the evacuation of the survivors but unable to do so. Trowa hated the constraints of solitude, usually when someone was coming up with a plan he would immerse himself in the group, intently listening to everyone talk. His stoic silence was thoughtful, running their ideas through his head before he could come up with a plan of his own to present – a pack, not unfamiliar voices over a radio transmission. But this solitude was driving him so mad he couldn't think, almost wishing he had a pet or something so he could at least feel a presence beside him.

At least it would be over soon, as they had decided to drop out early in anticipation of the ships arrival. Any time they could save would be welcome to the passengers and the actual entry into the atmosphere would give Trowa something that he badly needed to do. Sandrock had insisted on trying to contact Deathscythe, but when their communications ended in silence they all decided to drop anyway – they would be able to contact him once they had landed.

The actual task of piloting the craft from orbit into Earth was harder than it seemed, if you got the trajectory wrong by the slightest margin at the outset you would find yourself either missing your target by thousands of kilometres or burning up in the atmosphere at too steep an entry angle. Television and movies liked to make a drama of the shaking and fire during an atmospheric re-entry with the pilot wrestling bodily with the joystick, but the truth is that once the initial course was set, there was really little else to do but hang on and enjoy the ride. Perhaps it was the need to feel in control that would lead some people to yank on the joystick while the ship appeared to be coming apart at the seams, but to Trowa it was a pointless comfort, one he didn't need. Any course corrections at this time would be doing more harm than good.

Once he had breached the atmosphere and the airflow was washing over the aerilons and fins of the transport, then he turned back to the task of navigation. Deploying the parachutes to slow his descent, he angled the transport so that it would glide itself down on the soft sand somewhere near the ship.

The next part was, if Trowa was forced to admit it, the scariest part of the whole process. The transport didn't have engines that would work effectively in the atmosphere so his entire landing procedure was done without any additional thrust, just gliding into the Earth and using the parachutes to slow his descent. The line between a controlled and an uncontrolled fall was thin, thinner than he would be if he didn't get this landing right. It was also extremely hard to tell between the two until he got to that one tense moment when it was too late to do anything to save yourself. Then, once everything was out of his hands, he'd get to find out if he was going to live or to die.

Some people would say that luck was on Trowa's side today, as he landed flawlessy, the transport digging up a trench of sand as it ground out to a halt on the beach – right in the sight of the ship. Trowa would not be one of those people, however. He would say that it was all down to skill, and as for landing right by the ship? Well, he was just that good.

*

Heero undid the straps holding him in place with a grimace. No matter how graceful the landing was, it was going to hurt, especially since the harness seemed to be designed in such a way that the entire crash landing from orbit was stopped by his testicles. He probably wouldn't be able to walk straight for days – why couldn't it just be a normal car seat belt instead of this stupid five point harness?

Giving the harness another glare, Heero leaned over the computer console, trying to look over any relevant information. The radiation count was dipping low, while it was still enough to be wary of, it wouldn't be anywhere near deadly and should be stopped by simple radiation suits.

Of course, not having radiation suits made things a bit more interesting and none of them were about to go out in radiation that had been described as "well, I wouldn't call it safe, but it's not deadly". Heero may not have been planning to have any children, but he'd rather prefer not to rule out his options just in case. Well, if the harness hadn't already taken that option away from him.

Heero opened up the lid of his Gundam, sliding inside and strapping himself into the command chair. At least this hardness, while still being of the five point variety, was fastened around his _chest_ instead of his _crotch_. He'd been in a few simulations and it was actually a very comfortable restraint to be thrown around in. Flicking a few switches on the dash of the cockpit, Heero powered up the engines and started the procedure for getting out of the transport. Although it was designed to be able to jettison the mobile suit at a moments notice, that procedure was rather destructive to the transport itself and detonating the explosive bolts now while half the transport was buried in sand would probably be an unwise decision.

Accessing the suits computer, he linked in with the transports own computer and sent the command to open the rear hatch. All that came back was a flashing red light and an error - it would seem that the rear hatch had been buried in the sand and become completely stuck. It was at least something that he had foreseen, and Deathscythe would be along in a short while to come and assist him with the stuck hatch.

*

It felt to Duo like he wasn't even needed at all. Two of the Gundams had crawled out of their transports and were busy dragging the massive machines down to the shoreline to carry over to the ship.

"Deathscythe, I can't open the rear hatch. Please assist." The voice that came over the radio was hard to identify, he hadn't had that much contact with the other pilots. At least there was only one transport it could have possibly come from, so gunning the engines Duo took Deathscythe into a short leap to the shore, landing with a rough thud just south of the stricken transport.

Taking a closer look, he could see that the transport shuttle had gone nose-up during the landing, giving it a much smoother ride but having the effect of the rear end digging sharply into the sand, blocking the only exit it had. It occurred to Duo that the shuttle had dug so far into the sand that even if the explosive bolts were detonated, it wouldn't do enough to free the pilot from the wreckage. He would have had to rip apart the transport from the inside using the Gundam.

Manouevering the suit closer to the dug-in craft, he took a brief look at the situation before he proceeded. The transport was definitely dug in quite far, that much had been obvious from a distance - what he could just now see was that it must have hit a rock or something hard on the way in. There was a small tear on the side of the rear hatch, rupturing the hull and allowing sand to pour into the transport. Hopefully the pilot had done the smart thing and stayed in his Gundam on the way down, so he would be protected from the radiation coming through the hull breach.

"Yes." Well, that wasn't exactly a response filled with gratitude, but it was better than nothing. Positioning Deathscythe so that the suit was kneeling down in the sand, he carefully worked the arms around to grab at the sides of the craft. While Duo was excellent at graceful movements in battle, sharp turns and sweeping strikes, he was still rather inexperienced when it came to the more delicate movements of his suit, finding the minute adjustments required to make the Gundam picking up an object rather than crushing it difficult at best. He had gone through nearly a cartload of watermelons in that training exercise. It wasn't particularly pleasant being forced to clean it up afterwards.

When it came time to act though, Duo was confident in his abilities. The strong gundanium fingers gripped around each side of the transport, squeezing it just enough to put small dents in the metal hull of the ship. Deathscythe shifted just slightly as its arms were lifted up, bringing the transport with it in a horrible groan of bending metal and scraping sand.

With one last push he managed to pull the transport free, lifting the heavy weight out of its self-dug trench and dragging it slowly back on to the beach. Possibly the most difficult task of all was trying to get Deathscythe to move backwards while positioned on its knees. Once he was satisfied that the transport was pulled out enough that it wouldn't slip back into the hole it had created, he let go of the transport, giving a sharp knock on the top with Deathscythe's fist.

"All done here. Try it out." Duo spoke into the radio, before awkwardly moving Deathscythe back to its feet and shifting away from the hatch.

The whole thing clunked, before opening up with a grinding whir that did not sound mechanically healthy at all. Duo winced, hoping that it wasn't him that had caused the damage to the transport - and especially hoping that it could be fixed, there wasn't that much use to the people on the ship if the doors couldn't close.

Like an awkward parody of a mechanic under a car, the Gundam inside slid itself out of the transport, gripping the lip of the hatch and dragging itself bodily out. Duo just stood watching in awe as the massive construct pulled itself up with surprising grace before turning to face his own suit, the same blank mechanical stare looking through to him, just as he knew Deathscythe's own face would be glaring back at his fellow pilot.

"Hey Deathscythe!" A happy voice called over the radio while Duo was busy gawking at the fellow Gundam. Despite having one of his own, they were still awe inspiring to see in the flesh... so to speak. "This is Sandrock. Er, not the guy you're looking at, but... ok. I'm the one with the sickles." Duo turned his suits head, spotting a black and white Gundam with two sickles attached to it. "Heavyarms I'd say would be the guy with the giant gun attached, so the one you helped must be Wing."

"Is this necessary?" A calm voice reprimanded, Duo had trouble telling if it was Heavyarms or Wing, both of them he hadn't heard much from, and both of them sounded completely laconic.

"Hey, we need to know who's who here." Duo interrupted. He was already getting tired of the grouchy nature of some of his other pilots. He was definitely hoping that at least when he got to meet them in person, they were going to be more sociable. "You know, need to know who we're giving instructions to."

"Thanks, Deathscythe." Duo could almost imagine a sweet smile coming from the pilot of Sandrock, a look of gratitude for coming to his defense. It made him wonder what the actual pilots looked like. He'd already made some brief assumptions and guesses, but it was still tweaking at his curiosity.

"Sandrock, move." Deathscythe stated, a hint of amusement in his voice.

"What?" Quatre replied, adjusting the cameras to view the other Gundam. He was just about to query the other pilot further when a hideous crunching sound filled the cockpit, forcing him to take quick evasive manouevres to get Sandrock out of the way as the massive Sweeper shift crashed into the beach, spilling sand in a large solid wake as the bow cut into the beach.

Luckily the boat got itself stuck quickly, leaving Sandrock overbalanced and hanging on to the prow, clinging to the railing on the deck to keep from falling over. It occurred to him that maybe the railing wasn't strong enough to hold the weight of his Gundam just as the railing bent and snapped, causing both Quatre and Sandrock to fall backwards and hit the sand with an undignified thud.

"Shut up." Quatre fumed into the radio, not appreciating the laughter coming through the communications system. What was worse was he didn't know who was doing the laughing, so he didn't know who to go up and thump for it.

Grizzling to himself, he pulled the suit back upright, just glad that he hadn't got crushed underneath the weight of the ship. The armour could probably have taken it, but it was an experience he wished to avoid regardless.

"Ok, Deathscythe, are the engineers ready?" Quatre asked, tilting Sandrock's head to the other suit.

"Nah, shouldn't be." Deathscythe replied.

"Then I'd like to take a quick check of the area and have Sandrock get in touch with the base. We might as well make ourselves useful."


	4. Chapter 4: Deuteronomy

The engineers had worked remarkably fast, considering many of them needed to wear radiation suits. They had the modifications done in less than an hour, welding up the ruptures in Wing's transport and modifying all of them so that the engines would provide a certain amount of thrust themselves, hopefully enough to allow them to hover off the ground and keep the Gundams from having to do most of the work.

In short order the transports were being lifted up on to the deck of the ship, ready for loading the passengers. Duo once again mused that Howard had picked the crew of his ship - with one exception, of course - very well. Everyone was orderly and fast about entering the transports. Within another hour, they were ready to leave the ship behind, the Gundams hauling boxes full of weary refugees.

The flight to the Maguanac base was an eye opening experience for all of the pilots, but especially the three that had not been down on Earth to witness the devastation that had hit the area. They passed through the husks of burnt out villages, through roads that were covered in dead bodies: burnt, shot, or just having dropped dead from the radiation. The trees looked dead, burnt and broken with no leaves to cover them. The whole countryside was a depressing desert of black, charred earth.

The whole trip was in complete silence, each of the pilots believing that the devastation had to be limited – that it had to end. That over the next hill would be green grass and signs of life. Even Heero and Trowa failed to be unaffected by the profound stillness of the barren country. It was more than just the human bodies scattered around the countryside, it was the complete absence of life whatsoever. There was no rustling grass, no trees waving in the wind, no hint of a wary animal leaving its shelter for a curious peek at their passing. There was just nothing.

Each pilot was affected in unique ways. Trowa and Heero had no attachment whatsoever. They had never set foot on Earth, they had no ties to it in any way. But they knew death, and the death of a once vibrant country was deeply affecting in its own way. For Quatre, this was the Middle East – while it had never been his home, it was his homeland. Much of his family still lived in the region and he had many ties here.

Duo was just wondering if they hadn't accidentally landed on Mars instead.

*

They approached the coordinates of the Maguanac base shortly after nightfall, thanks to the modifications from the engineering team they hadn't had to drag the transports along as much as they feared, and had made good progress through the night.

The Maguanac base itself was completely hidden, and they had to trust Sandrock to lead them to the location, especially since the Maguanacs were not at all willing to open up the base doors for very long just so they could see the location. Sandrock guided them there accurately, however and before long they were staring at the shifting sand beneath their feet, flowing into a widening crack as the door to the hidden base opened up before them.

"Here we are." Quatre breathed with a sigh of relief. "Everyone get the transports inside."

Without a transport to hold, Deathscythe was left standing at the back, waiting to assist anyone that needed it. Just as with everything they did, the pilots were efficient to a tee, moving the transports inside and resting them in the cramped space at the entrance.

"That's odd." The doors began to swing themselves shut as Quatre spoke. "The entrance was supposed to be much bigger."

"Looks fairly new." Heavyarms remarked.

"We set up a wall for quarantine." The voice of Rashid came over Quatre's radio. "Please tell everyone we're going to need to spray everything down before we take them into the main hanger. Tell them to stay put until they're instructed to leave."

Just as Quatre was relaying this information to the other pilots and their respective transports, the room suddenly filled with a thick white foam from the many tiny nozzles lining the walls. The foam had nearly covered them entirely when just as quickly, the nozzles changed to a jet-like spray, washing off the foam and letting it drain down on the floor of the room.

The blast doors opened, seemingly signalling the end of the spraying. Quatre lead the way forward, dragging his transport with him. He had many questions now to ask Rashid, just how he set up a decontamination chamber without any prior knowledge of a radioactive disaster being the first.

A group of Maguanacs in radiation suits fanned out around the suits and transports, each of them waving what looked to be an old fashioned Geiger counter over the surface of each. Quatre was the first to receive the treatment and once they were done they motioned for him to come out, where they again waved the counters over his body as well.

"I'm glad to see you haven't been affected, Master Quatre." The voice was Rashid's, while he couldn't see the man's face behind the plastic mask, he could see his facial hair. "Welcome to our base."

"Thank you, Rashid." Quatre replied politely, giving the much taller man a small bow. "It is good to be here."

The older man waved a hand with a short chuckle; often young Quatre had a habit of being far more formal than was really required.

"You are always welcome here." Rashid's smile slowly turned to a frown, as if he suddenly realised why the younger boy was there. "I just wish it were under better circumstances."

Quatre nodded, it was a sentiment he couldn't argue with. "We have the chance to save a lot of people. It's better than what I'd be doing otherwise."

Rashid nodded back. "You'd better get out of here while we check the rest of the people. Find Auda, he can show you where you'll be staying."

*

When the decontamination showed that there was no dire threat to the people inside the base, Rashid gathered up everyone in the massive cavernous entrance. Standing on the long walkway above with Auda and Quatre both beside him, he addressed the new refugees.

"I'd like to thank everyone for being so calm during the procedures. While your welcome hasn't been the warmest one, we have to make sure that everyone on the base is safe. So we ask that for the time being, you stick to the quarters you have been given and make sure to listen to all the Maguanacs in the base if they give you instructions. We are going to need everyone's cooperation and eventually, assistance if we are to survive the tragedy that has come to the planet. I know everyone will want answers for what has happened, but those will have to come after we have everyone settled. Now please, follow your escorts in groups down to your living quarters and we will try to assign rooms."

Rashid stepped down from the podium, a worrying amount of sweat gathered on his brows.

"Nice speech," Quatre said from the sidelines, leaning over a rail and looking at the gathered masses below. There had to be at least two hundred people in the bunker entrance, it was suddenly occurring to him that the entire complex must have been designed to house a huge number of people. "Were there any survivors from the village above?"

Rashid looked downcast, trying to avoid his young leader's piercing eyes. He went to stand beside Quatre, mimicking his pose of leaning over the edge, hands on the rails.

"Not many. Please, don't ask any of the others about it. It was... hard, for all of us." He paused, turning away from the crowds below and leaning his back against the railing. "There were so many dead, so many dying. The fires got most of the village, anyone that wasn't caught by the fire was killed by the radiation. But the hardest part was the people who were still alive… we killed them. Because we couldn't save them."

Auda went over to stand beside Rashid, placing a calming hand on the larger man's shoulder. "This... I want to say war, but whatever it is, Master Quatre. This is worst than anything we could have imagined. When you have time, I'd like to speak to you. It is... important."

With that, Auda turned and left, placing the fez he had been holding at his side on his head.

"I need to go and meet some of these other pilots now." Quatre stated, pushing himself up off the railing.

"Master... no one will blame you if you mourn." Rashid stood to block his path, a concerned face hiding behind a gigantic beard.

"There'll be time for that later. I don't even know the full situation, Rashid." Quatre's shoulders slumped, there was no way he could even try pushing his way against the lumbering giant of a man. "I'm glad I don't know, I need to get on with helping these people out. We can't sit around and cry, we have work to do."

The older man stepped aside, letting Quatre move along to meet with these new pilots.

*

It was a rather awkward silence as the other three boys stood by their respective Gundams. They had been told not to move until someone called Master Quatre had come to collect them. Alone and in a strange place, each of them had elected to lean against the legs of their suits, eyeing up the others suspiciously.

It wasn't long after the speech that a small blond haired teenager - one they had seen standing on the walkway above with the leader of the base - approaching them with a smile far too wide for the situation. He was wearing similar clothing to the other natives of the base that were wandering around: baggy trousers and a white dress shirt covered with a purple vest. He was wearing an odd looking set of aviator goggles that seemed to have the job of pushing his bangs out from in front of his eyes.

"I'm Quatre Raberba Winner. This," He gestured to the fourth suit in the line. "Is Sandrock. It's nice to meet you all." He deliberately didn't press for any more information, hoping that the other pilots would be relaxed enough to offer it on their own.

The first to introduce himself was the brunet uni-bang sporting boy in front of the red Gundam. "I have no name, but I pilot Heavyarms." He seemed to be much taller than Quatre, wearing very tight jeans and a dark turtleneck, it just added to the impression of lankiness. "For this mission, I have been called Trowa Barton. You may call me that, if you like."

He lowered his head back down to his chest, his eyes disappearing behind his long fringe. "I also have no name," The Asian pilot grunted, appreciating the irony of there being more than one nameless pilot. He was dressed oddly, a green tank top and what appeared to be spandex pants, all topped off with urine-yellow shoes. "But for this mission, I have been given the name Heero Yuy and the Gundam Wing."

"I'm uh, Duo Maxwell," This was the boy with the distinctive braided brown hair, dressed in what seemed to be a priest's garb. "That's actually my name, but I guess I did make it up myself. It's uh, a long story. My baby here is Deathscythe."

"Well," Quatre smiled at the others. "It's nice to meet you all. There's a room by mine that I've set up, but since we're so short on space it's going to be two people per room. We can decide who'll go where later, I'm guessing we've got a lot to talk about." The others nodded, moving away from their Gundams and falling in line behind Quatre as he led them through the maze of corridors that was the Maguanac base.


	5. Chapter 5: Proverbs

Quatre stalked down the corridors leading back to his room, a large folder of papers tucked neatly under one arm. The meeting from hell with Auda had gone much worse than expected and now he understood why the man had insisted it was only him attending the meeting, not the other pilots. While he could understand it, he still cursed Auda a coward. Now he was the one who would have to brief the others when he got back, and it was not something the young Arab was especially looking forward to.

He pushed open the door to his room with a grumble, not the dread of obligation, but from the fact that all four of the pilots were now forced to occupy the same room. Last night they had dragged a mattress into the room, adding to Quatre's normal double bed and his couch. Trowa had taken the mattress and Heero was sleeping on the couch, but the loud mouthed idiot with the braid had insisted on sharing his bed, leading to the most uncomfortable night he had ever experienced while the other boy snored contentedly on the other side of the bed.

"Hey Kat, what's up?" Duo's voice startled him out of his annoyed contemplation, reminding him that he'd arrived.

"I have the information from the briefing." Quatre sighed, taking a seat at the dining table in the middle of the room. "I don't think you're going to like it."

"What's up?" Duo queried as the other two pilots arrived in the room, each taking a seat around the table.

Quatre handed around a folder to each of the other pilots as he spoke, letting them see the evidence he had found for themselves. "Most communication satellites are not responding, even the ones that were proved nearly impossible to get into. But we were able to find some photos that were being passed around."

All the boys had found the sequence of photos in question, a colony getting closer and closer to the camera until it was possible to see the writing on the maintenance airlocks. They were followed by one final photo, an error stating the satellite signal had been lost.

"So it was a colony drop." Heero concluded as he browsed over the photos, meticulously organising them for whatever reason he had. The other two were just staring down at the photos, seeing if they could arrange them to tell a different story. "I thought that would wipe out the planet."

"Take a closer look at the photos." Quatre shuffled through until he found the one he was looking for, promptly displaying it to the others. "See these? Look like they're explosions. All along here you can see where the hull is damaged and starting to break up. I think the colony was being hit by missiles, it wouldn't have made it through the atmosphere."

"So the Alliance shot the colony down?" Duo browsed through his own copy of the pictures, grimacing when he saw what could be imagined as a human shape being blasted out into vacuum from a hull breach. "Can't say I blame them, but damn. What were the fires about?"

"The colony burning up in the atmosphere." Trowa looked up at the others for the first time. "It's miles long, that's a huge amount of heat. It could've set off forest fires and buildings on the ground."

"Maybe, but that doesn't explain the radiation, or why there was a shockwave." Quatre slid an early photo of the full colony in front of the others, circling the centre of the torus with a red marker. "All colonies have a Fusion reactor in the middle, to provide the power that solar panels can't make up. They're heavily shielded, so they'd survive the re-entry. They would have hit the planet and exploded."

"I thought fusion reactors were clean?" Heero asked as he thumbed through reports on outside radiation levels. "The ones in our Gundams don't give off so much radiation when they go critical."

"Fusion with a capital F." Quatre sighed, nervously adjusting the goggles on his head. "Apparently an engineer's joke, because it's a fusion of both fission and fusion reactors. The colonies are old, so are the reactors. The earliest reactors needed the fission to keep the fusion reaction going."

Duo threw his folder back on to the table with a huff. Sure he was understanding the dumbed down version he was getting, but the tables of numbers and reports meant nothing to him. "I don't see how this helps. It's just giving us more questions. How far does all this go? Are there going to be more colonies falling on our heads?"

"I don't know." Quatre just shook his head, looking back at Duo with those puppy dog eyes that made him feel like he was guilty for letting this happen to the blond. "They're just clues. But it'll fit together somehow. If we can get to the satellites, we should be able to find more."

"Why are the satellites down?" Trowa mused. "They all got hit by the colony?"

"Could be the Alliance took them down because of the attack." Heero suggested.

"At this point, does it matter? They're down." Duo stood from the table, leaning over his chair to regard his fellow pilots. "Sitting here and guessing what's happening isn't going to help. We're safe, let's go out and see what actually_ is _happening."

Duo grinned when the other pilots eventually nodded their slow approval. He was competent at best when it came down to theory, but when it came to the practical side he was a goddamn genius.

"Should we head out then?" Trowa queried, rising from the and moving around to join Duo.

"Well, not right now." Quatre leaned back in his chair, tossing his intelligence folder into the middle of the table with the resignation that no one was interested in hearing the rest of the details. "We'd want to at least fix up the suits with some sensor equipment... or something, at least. There's no need to rush, we've still got a lot to do here."

"Maybe you have lots to do." Duo grumbled. "We've just been sitting around all day."

*

Trowa was leaning back on the couch, watching the braided pilot pace the room with some measure of sympathy. They had gone from learning of a massive nuclear catastrophe, to travelling through a wasteland decimated by fire and radiation, only to be isolated in a tiny room when for all they knew the world was falling down around them. Their... host, Quatre was filling them in the few times he would came back to the room but most of the time he was out, summoned to some meeting or control room. Heero had huddled away into a corner to read all the reports that came back, barely sparing a word to any of the other pilots.

"Come on." Trowa said to the other pilot, rising to his feet.

"Huh?" Duo stopped mid-stride, turning to face Trowa with a puzzled expression all over his face. Trowa always believed that someone's face would tell you more than their words, but that went double for Duo. The boy had the most expressive features of anyone he had ever seen.

"We're not doing anything here. Let's go find something useful to do." Not waiting for the other boy's approval, Trowa strode out of the room in his usual calm and understated manner, the door slowly clicking behind him to announce his departure.

The corridors were typical of an underground base, bare and emotionless concrete walls decorated only with dust and cryptic hallway numbers that meant nothing to a non-resident. It reminded him a lot of the poorer colony sectors: functional, but no money was ever spent on making it feel like home.

Another click from the door he had left signalled that Duo was indeed following behind him. He smiled slightly, keeping his back turned and his face hidden from the other pilot. Slowing his pace slightly, he let Duo catch up to him in a short jog – no need to break his stride to do that.

"Why do you do that?" Duo asked as he caught up, forcing Trowa to acknowledge him.

"Do what?" He queried, eyes briefly flicking to the side. Even Duo's way of walking was causal, one thumb in his pocket, head tilted to regard Trowa causing his braid to bounce oddly off his shoulder.

"The International Man of Solitude, Mystery and Broodypants thing. It's kind of weird, I'm getting the same vibe from the asian guy... Heero, or something." Trowa quirked an eyebrow at him, gears turning in his mind as he considered the question. His behaviour wasn't something he had given much consideration, though it was obvious that others found it odd.

"It suits me. Keeps people away." Trowa said at last. Somehow Duo had managed to turn a comment of '_you're aloof_' into something that was throwing him off balance.

"Yeah? Guess you don't really need personal skills locked in a Gundam." Duo remarked, shoving his hands into his pockets as he fell back into step. "Dunno. I figured you were just shy at first – didn't add up though, you're pretty comfortable around us... strangers, you know."

"Where are you going with this?"

"Dunno." Duo shrugged, flashing Trowa a short grin. "Just thought it was weird, that sort of mystery make-him-follow-me-down-the-corridor. You could've just said where we were going."

He hadn't rated Duo highly on their first meeting, but he was a pilot for a reason. The sharp mind and observation that was showing through was a late reminder that he should not be underestimating any of them. Stopping at a bend in the corridor, he turned to face Duo. "You didn't ask."

"No point." Duo just shrugged and flashed his grin again. "You would've just ignored it and been all mystery- uh..."

Duo stammered as Trowa's hand brushed his cheek, touching the skin lightly on it's path to cradle the back of his head. Not giving the other boy time to react, Trowa pressed his body up against Duo's and touched their lips together just long enough for Duo feel the briefest flick of a tongue. Just as quickly it was gone, Trowa turning away and walking back down the corridor.

"Wh- what the hell did you do that for?" Duo stammered, his breathing having hitched with the surprise.

"To shut you up." Trowa responded, still keeping his back turned as he walked away.

Duo ran back to the other boy, catching up in a few long strides. "Hey!" He protested, falling back in step and glaring holes in the side of Trowa's head. "You could've just told me to, so why did you do it?"

"No point." He finally turned his head to face Duo, sporting a predatory grin. "You would've just ignored it and continued to yammer."

"Hey, that's bullshit." Duo grumbled, his face flushing as Trowa continued walking off. "Man, you're a freak."

Trowa chuckled to himself. There was a reason he was a pilot too and he didn't appreciate the psychoanalysis. "Are you coming, or not?"

*

"So you're Brian." Duo gripped the older man's hand, grinning manically. "Good to finally see you in person."

Brian was shorter than Duo had imagined, much younger too. He couldn't have been more than nineteen or twenty; Duo would have guessed that the low voice over the radio would have been thirty at least. He looked like Howard might have forty years and a lot more hair ago, even down to the Hawaiian shirt and shorts – though those were just lying on the table, discarded in favour of a medical gown. It was enough to wonder if there was some sort of family tie there.

"You too kid, you too." Brian laughed before letting Duo's hand go. "We owe a lot to you and your friends." He nodded to Trowa with a small smile.

Duo glanced down, noticing that the man had slipped something into his palm with the handshake. Turning his hand over, he saw the small piece of bloodied flesh. Glancing up to catch Brian's gaze, he saw the hopeless expression as the man nodded gently.

"What..." Duo whispered, lowering his gaze to the small patch of skin as his heart sank.

"I was out of the bridge when it hit, taking a smoke break." Brian just shrugged, leaning back on the infirmary bunk. "Howie said they'd kill me, don't think he saw it this way though."

"Shit." Duo breathed, not sure what else to say. What could he say to someone who was dying? Lie to him, say he'll pull through? Some crap about heaven and hell that he didn't believe in? "I guess." Duo chuckled, tugging at the collar of his priest uniform. "Guess I shouldn't have worn this."

Brian laughed at that, patting him on the shoulder. "Yeah, not all that appropriate." He chuckled, giving Duo a short wink. "Why the costume, anyway? Shouldn't you be wearing, you know, normal clothes?"

"Yeah, you'd think so." Duo chuckled softly, his eyes dipping to avoid eye contact. "Yeah, I was training to be a priest, actually. Kinda just wore it out of tradition, I guess. Think I might have to change, though."

Duo turned as the door behind them swung open, spotting the base medic walk into the room. Turning back to Brian, he locked eyes with the man, giving silent acknowledgement that it was time for them to leave. Trowa was the first to go, giving a curt nod to Brian as he left. Duo followed closely behind him, his eyes avoiding the dying man at the same time he was feeling guilty for doing so.

He turned on Trowa as soon as they were out in the hall, the door having not even shut before he started ranting. "Is that what you brought me here to see? Him dying?"

Trowa just shrugged, infuriating Duo even more. "I didn't know." He absently brushed his bang out of his eye, making eye contact with Duo for the first time since they had met. "I just wanted to show you some of the people you saved."

"Why?" Duo asked, not sure if he relented because Trowa would be impossible to guilt or just because he was too emotionally worn to try it.

"Don't know." So far Trowa was beginning to have an annoying habit with that phrase.

"Oh, come on." Duo grumbled in an exasperated tone, turning away from Trowa to lean against the wall. "You do something and you don't even know why?"

"I find my instincts work better if I don't question them."

"Yeah," Duo chuckled humourlessly to himself. "Yeah, I guess you've got a point."


	6. Chapter 6: The WindCurved Sandhills

Author notes:

I usually don't see the point behind author's notes, but I thought I should put at least a token one in, though I don't plan on doing one every chapter.

Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far, it means a hell of a lot and has given me more motivation to keep on writing. I'm not sure about replying to any reviews, since quite a few ask questions that I don't want to spoil. If you do want a reply though, you can send me a private message/e-mail, and I'll make sure to reply.

My schedule is to post a new chapter each week without skipping any, which I've been managing so far by making sure I'm a few chapters ahead. I do have a planned ending for the story, and I doubt it will go past twenty chapters. Writing out what the plot was in advance was one of the best things I could do for my story, I recommend it to all writers to avoid stories that go nowhere.

I'd also like to thank my wonderful beta SuccumbDefeat, who's been betaing the story since the start.

*

Trowa was falling back into the familiar controls of Heavyarms, trying to get used to the new equipment that his Gundam was now sporting. Along with Duo, he had been sent out to gather whatever data they could in the surrounding area. Heero and Quatre had decided they would be of more use staying behind at the base, analysing the incoming data.

"Shit." Duo's cursing came in over the radio. "I've nearly dropped the stuff twice now. This isn't the easiest equipment to handle, you know."

Trowa couldn't help but agree, though he would never have admitted that he was having trouble with keeping a grip on the sensors. "Just make sure you don't drop it, we can't afford any damage." He responded, wincing as he did. He didn't want to be too cold, he actually liked his fellow pilot. Last night they had even managed to get past the awkwardness of the previous day by 'borrowing' a bottle of vodka and getting drunk in a quiet corner of the hanger. Hopefully Duo was oblivious that Trowa had dragged a passed-out Duo to the bed he shared with Quatre, arranging them delicately so Duo was spooning up against the soundly sleeping blond. He'd barely been able to contain his snickers when Quatre had ranted in the morning to a hungover Duo about alcohol and waking up with morning wood poking you in the back. That last one nearly killed him – or gotten him killed, maybe – he really could be a git sometimes.

"Yeah, kinda figured that one out for myself. Thanks." Duo had been in a shitty mood all morning and trying to stifle his laughter at it was just making the American even moodier. At least in the privacy of his cockpit he was able to snigger at every annoyed remark that came across. "Alright, I've gone far enough I think. I'll set up the equipment here."

Trowa nodded shortly, heedless of the fact that the other boy would not be able to see the gesture. Carefully he lowered his suit down to one knee, letting the equipment drop slowly down to the ground. From what had been explained to him, all he needed to do was plant the various boxes into the ground. From there they would deploy and start digging up soil samples and pick up radar and communications, all of which could be relayed back to the base.

"Hey, Trowa? Got something weird over here."

"Yeah, what is it?" He continued his work, though his curiosity had piqued. Duo's voice had gone from annoyingly petulant to serious.

"Picking up something on active radar. Looks like a suit, but it's not moving."

Trowa broke away from his work on the ground, quickly glancing at the electronic map to check Duo's last position. "On my way, radio silence until then." This was certainly far more interesting than watching the sensors deploy and quite possibly more important.

Fortunately Duo was not far away and a brief ten minute flight brought him within sight of the other Gundam. Settling into a slow fall, Trowa was keeping as low as possible as he approached in an attempt to avoid any radar coming from the fallen suit. He had reached the other suit, crouched behind the small burnt-out remains of a church, before he could finally even detect the object as a small dip in the radar scan. It was a wonder that Duo had managed to even spot it at all.

Gesturing to Duo with the massive gatling gun, Trowa moved as quietly as he could in the massive robot, keeping cover behind the charred buildings as they approached. As they got closer, Trowa was able to see a visual on the suit, a gently smoking wreck that had slammed into the side of a small cliff.

"That thing's not getting up in a hurry." Duo commented, apparently he was also in visual range.

"We should take it back, it could have parts we could use." Trowa replied as they reached their destination, standing on either side of the wreck.

"Looks like a standard Leo." Duo remarked, spotting the familiar configuration of the Alliance's mainstay mobile suit. "Cockpit's still sealed."

"Good." Trowa bent his suit down, examining the wreck for any easy way to drag it out of there. Everything they found was just raising more questions. This Leo, crashed into the side of a cliff yet left unmarred by the fire that raged the surrounding countryside. The convenience of the Maguanacs just happening to have a functional decontamination chamber just before the country is struck with a mysterious nuclear blast. His fellow pilots were especially a mystery, as varied as they were in temperament and behaviour.

It was a question that bothered Trowa as they struggled to drag the awkward weight of the Leo back to the base. His own selection as a pilot had been as random and haphazard as it could possibly be. So how had his fellow pilots acquired their dubious distinction as terrorists from the colonies? Were they fighting for some cause, or like him were they just along for the ride? Quatre seemed the most likely candidate for some righteous creed, the boy just seemed like he was made for a holy crusade against injustice and tyranny. Duo... well, he could always just ask Duo what he was fighting for, in a few days the boy had become the closest thing to a friend that Trowa could remember.

Heero, now Heero was different. There were times that Trowa could see part of himself in Heero, the aloofness and determination. Yet like any good puzzle as soon as he thought he had Heero figured out, he would pull into a completely contradicting behaviour. For every time his cold, calculating exterior would lull him into thinking the boy ran entirely on logic and reason, Heero would take a gut feeling or idea and just run with it, flying into the face of sense with reckless abandon. It had started to make Trowa wonder if the boy was doing it just to toy with him.

"Hey Tro, you awake in there?" Duo's call snapped him out of his musing, in time to notice that they had arrived back at the entrance to the base. He had been running on autopilot the whole time, barely noticing what his hands were doing as they had dragged the suit along.

"Yeah, I'm here. What are we going to do about that?" Trowa asked, nodding back the way they came.

"About what?" Confused, Duo hadn't even noticed the turn of Heavyarms' head.

"That." Trowa turned the torso of his suit around, raising the robotic arm to point at the line of sand dug up by the Leo as it scraped along the ground. A line leading right to the hidden entrance of the Maguanac base.

"Well, shit."

*

It turned out that the tracks were not such a problem for the Maguanacs, they had set their base up in an area so prone to sandstorms that even when one was not blasting through the area the wind would cover any tracks they could make in under an hour. Trowa could almost believe that this place was the origin of the "shifting sands of the desert" cliché. Once the wind was pointed out to him, he could even see that the shape of the surrounding dunes had changed in the short period they had been living there.

"What are you looking at, Trowa?" The voice of Quatre called from behind him, the only other noise in the small office.

"Just sand, it seems." Trowa broke his gaze from the monitor and turned to face the other boy. It may have just been sand, but the subtle movements and shifts that he was now beginning to see was fascinating to him. On the colonies, everything was artificial in some way. Even the trees and grass that had been transplanted from Earth rarely varied, they were just background moving in the same predictable way, day in, day out. Here, the sand shifted and moved like it had a mind of his own. He'd never noticed it before on the colonies because the background just didn't change. On Earth, it was like staring at the tiniest twitching of a toe on a living, breathing being that was so massive he could not comprehend it. Looking at the sands move and twitch at the behest of a mind that was beyond him, he could see why so many regarded the Earth as a living thing, so fragile and yet so powerful at the same time.

No wonder the denizens of Earth were so adamant in their belief of God. There was something so ineffable, so powerful and beyond comprehension. Something that demanded worship, respect and nurture. Something that gave birth to the entire human race.

And we planned to kill it.

"... still not sure, but we're going to extract him. If it is him, you realise what this means, right?" Apparently his attention had drifted off in his musings. Trowa shook his head, he didn't realise what anything that Quatre had said meant.

"Well, I know he's not that high up in the Alliance, but Rashid reckons that Zechs Merquise is close to Khushrenada. We'll have to take on OZ, so with Zechs as a prisoner we have a much bigger advantage!" Trowa just stared blankly at Quatre for a few moments longer, still catching up with the mental shift of gears.

"What does it matter?" Trowa finally asked, receiving a few blinks and a blank stare as Quatre's own mind was thrown for a loop. "You said yourself; our best guess is that the blasts have spread into much of Western Europe. When the dust clears, if there's still an OZ or an Alliance, will they even be relevant?"

Quatre grabbed one of the office chairs from a nearby terminal, sliding it over and straddling the back in one smooth motion to sit down next to Trowa. "All we have are guesses." Both the blond's voice and face were much softer now, leaning close enough to Trowa that he could see worry lines around the other boys' eyes. "But if we have Merquise, we have an advantage. Information, leverage, it all helps us."

Trowa turned his head to the side, breaking the earnest gaze. There was a passion there, a drive that he could comprehend, yet not share. "It's pointless now. We have no mission; if we can even help the people already here I'd be surprised." Trowa stood up, heading to the door in a contemplative slump. He turned as he reached the door, regarding the other boy in the chair. Quatre was watching him go, an impatient look on his face as if he were just on the verge of replying but couldn't find the words to do so. Lowering his head, Trowa pushed the door open and walked away.

*

Trowa pushed the door to their shared room open carefully, wary of startling his oftentimes skittish roommates. Peering inside, he found the usual scene. Heero was at the table, too many documents and folders to name scattered across its rough wooden surface. He was either too distracted or just didn't care enough to acknowledge Trowa's entrance. Quatre he had left behind in the control room and Duo was nowhere to be found, probably off annoying the base security by trying to sneak into restricted areas.

Sitting down at the table, he picked up one of the folders, scanning the title and drawing an annoyed glance from the Japanese boy opposite. Satellite data. Briefly flicking through the pages, he saw it was pages upon pages of raw data, angles and inclinations from the results of orbital LIDAR scans. Flicking through another folder, he found the same thing, data that was of no use to anyone without a computer to pass it through.

"What do you have all this for?" Trowa threw the folder on a nearby pile, turning his attention back to Heero in time to see the other boy sketching down a ruler on a large piece of graph paper. "What, is doing LIDAR and RADAR scans by hand a hobby of yours?"

Heero glanced up at the sarcastic tone, dropping the pen back down to the table to concentrate his full frowning powers on to Trowa. "The data produces an error when we try to process it. I'm trying to see if the data is valid."

"Got anything?"

"Not much, really." Heero twisted the graph paper as Trowa moved around behind him. There were a few numbers scattered over the page, but it was mostly filled with carefully drawn X's. "The X's are null results, when it doesn't hit anything. This is..." Heero grabbed another folder sitting next to him, flicking it open briefly to get a number from the page, "Colony 322, L2 cluster. Or at least where it should be. It's mostly just blank space now."

"So the colony has been destroyed?"

"Or moved." Heero shrugged, turning the paper back. "No way to tell without a computer image. But the data is fine."

Trowa shrugged, flipping through the incoherent numbers of another random folder as if the answer could leap out from the pages if they were turned fast enough. "Did Quatre tell you about the guy we found?"

Heero nodded silently, busy filing the assorted papers back in their appropriate folders. "Zechs Merquise. Could be valuable to the mission." He roughly snatched the folder out of Trowa's hands, placing it finally on top of the sorted pile.

"You think we still have a mission too?" After holding on to air for a few confused moments, Trowa let his hands drop back down to his sides.

"We always have a mission."

"Wish I could believe you." Trowa shoved his hands into his jean pockets, leaning against the back of the couch in an effort to act nonchalant. "I've been through war before, a lot of battles. This just doesn't feel the same. I just... I feel like this is so much bigger than us."

"It's the same." Finished with organising his folders, Heero grabbed the stack and moved to the door. Stopping just past Trowa, he turned to subtly sniff the air. "Have you been drinking?"

Trowa pinched his thumb and forefinger in front of his face, spreading them just slightly as Heero rolled his eyes. "Little bit."

Heero said nothing, just turned and left the room.

*

It didn't take long for Duo to return, apparently having once again been discovered by Maguanac security. Trowa stood up from his position on the couch, giving the other boy a short nod of greeting.

"Have you heard anything more about this Merquise we picked up?"

Duo shook his head. "Only who he was."

"We should probably find out about him." Trowa nodded, opening his mouth to continue when Duo suddenly lunged forward, shoving him violently backwards. His mind barely had time to register he was being attacked before he landed on the solitary bed with a short bounce and the faint sound of wood cracking.

"What the hell?" He only just managed to get the words out before Duo pounced on top of him, pinning his wrists down with a wicked grin.

"Don't start something you don't intend to finish, Trowa." Duo leaned down to kiss him full on the mouth, a slow and gentle exploration of his lips that spoke of the other boy's lack of experience. It occurred to Trowa then that he would easily be able to shove Duo off, but he just couldn't see why he would want to.

Duo pulled back from the kiss, looking at Trowa with a puzzled expression on his face. "Have you been drinking?"


	7. Chapter 7: The Calamity

"It's getting annoying you know." Trowa sat up from the couch he had been lying on for the past hour, turning to regard Heero. He still had his back turned, not bothering to turn to Trowa to speak, even if he was the only other person in the room.

"What's annoying?" Trowa queried, leaning his elbows on the edge of the couch.

"You and Duo. I've had two weeks of having to ignore you two having sloppy, awkward sex. Actually, I'm surprised Duo was still in the mood to let you do... that... to him after you managed to elbow him in the face."

Trowa managed his best imitation of a goldfish yet, his bugging out of his head as his mouth opened and closed in a vain attempt to release syllables that were firmly trapped in his throat. "Uh..." He managed, hoping he didn't look as stupid as he felt while recovering from shock.

"I'm surprised you think no one's noticed. Though I guess Quatre hasn't, otherwise he wouldn't be sleeping in that bed." Having finished what he wanted to say, Heero silently walked to the door and left the room. It was beginning to become somewhat of a routine for him.

Trowa fell back to the couch and covered his hands with his eyes. He didn't think they were being that obvious, though maybe Heero was more observant than most. Observant enough to be spying in the hanger where said elbowing incident had occurred... well, that was weird and really damn creepy. Hopefully Heero would just keep it to himself. Trowa didn't really want to be open about his relationship with Duo, because it barely even counted as a relationship. They had sex whenever they were feeling horny... which for two teenage boys was ninety percent of the time, and Duo had been a good friend to have around. He'd even managed to start getting Trowa to open up a bit. Whatever innate qualities a relationship had, Trowa did not know them. But he knew that they weren't there between him and Duo.

As for sloppy and awkward? Well, Heero could have a point there, they were both inexperienced virgins. But it felt good regardless, and it was definitely a comfort to have Duo in the middle of this firestorm.

*

"What's going on?" Trowa had been taking part in another rousing game of staring at the ceiling while lying on the couch when he had been summoned to the hanger housing their mobile suits.

"We found a distress signal." Quatre was the first to meet him in the hanger, jogging up to his side as he entered. He could see both Heero and Duo climbing into what appeared to be a VTOL transport plane. "It was from Relena Darlian, daughter of the Vice Foreign Minister. We're going to try to rescue her."

"All four of us?" Trowa queried as they reached the ramp.

"Needs a crew of four, and we're both expendable and qualified. She was in a shuttle crash, there may be more we need to pick up."

Trowa snickered lightly at Quatre's disinterested shrug, boarding the plane ahead of the Arabian boy. The plane appeared to be a military transport at one time. Each of the ten seats lining the sides had weapon racks behind them: all of which, Trowa was relieved to note, contained assault rifles.

Grabbing one of the rifles out of its stand, he gave it a cursory glance. Apparently the Maguanacs were a well funded operation, they weren't using old gunpowder rifles – they were using fairly modern electromagnetic railguns. Trowa had never used one before, they were too hard to maintain for mercenary companies and they required a lot of power to charge once the batteries were drained. For those two facts alone they had been relegated to the domain of militaries, despite the technology being many centuries old. Checking the side, he could see this particular one was fully charged and loaded – they could hold many more rounds than a traditional machine gun could – they were taking good care of their weapons too, it seemed.

Placing the gun back on the rack, Trowa turned his head to see that Quatre had been watching him with a pleased grin as he inspected the weapon. He gave the other boy a polite nod, as if to say he was impressed with the equipment provided.

"They've been fighting against the Alliance for a while." Quatre explained, picking up a rifle himself. "My family are pacifists, but I've been finding ways to channel the money they need."

"Your family?" Trowa turned to regard Quatre, his mind clicking on to the subtext. Quatre must have come from a wealthy family – but wealthy enough to not notice the millions of credits this equipment must have cost?

"We have a family business, the Winner Company. Most of the construction in L4 colonies goes through the company."

"So you've been sending the Maguanacs building materials for this base?" Trowa reasoned, his curiosity satisfied when Quatre finally nodded. "Shouldn't this be a secret? If your family finds out?"

Quatre just shrugged, shoving the rifle he had been holding back in the stand. "All things considered, my father finding out about the money doesn't seem important anymore. If I survive his aneurysm over the mobile suit, the world war... he'll probably forget about the money."

The loud whirring of jet turbines winding up signalled the end of their conversation, prompting the two teenagers to secure themselves in the surrounding seats. The transport they were in was a fairly standard troop carrier, one that even Trowa's mercenary company had been able to afford.

The routine was bringing back a feeling of familiarity – right shoulder strap over, attach to waist strap, left shoulder strap over – it was just missing the clicking of eight other harness buckles underneath the roar of the turbines. Shaking his head of old memories, Trowa gripped the handles of the seat as the cabin shook with the takeoff, lurching from side to side before it could find a stable position.

"Sorry! Totally my bad!" Duo's cheerful voice yelled from the cockpit as the rocking subsided.

The plane managed to get into the air in short order, with only a few more yelled apologies from Duo. Thankfully the flight was not nearly as rocky as the takeoff, so once in the air both Quatre and Trowa were able to journey into the cockpit, a cramped two seated affair with rather dated controls.

"Sorry about that." Duo waved cheerily from the pilot's seat. "I've never flown one of these before."

"And you let him fly?" Trowa turned his gaze to Heero, who seemed to have eaten something especially sour.

"He failed to mention that."

"Well, we're in the air aren't we?" Duo swivelled his seat back to the windshield, setting the necessary options to bring the plane into autopilot. "So, what are we expecting?"

"Picking up as many civilians as we can." All eyes turned to Quatre for the expected briefing. It was hard not to notice the excited glow that spread over the boys features as the others looked to him for leadership, Trowa was busy musing that he was like a little puppy dog starved for attention. At least the details were trivial enough to not warrant his full attention. Distress call, few details because the rescuers had something to hide, it was very similar to the missions the mercenary group had been hired out for. Go in, a bit of fighting, get double-crossed, steal the money, leave.

"Double-crossed?" Trowa was shaken out of his thoughts by the question, looking up to find the other boys staring at him. Had he said that out loud?

"Oh, just thinking, sorry." Trowa shrugged, shoving his hands back into his jeans in a useless show of nonchalance. "No one ever wanted to pay the bill for rescue missions."

_I've got to get out of here._ Turning before his indifferent façade could crack, he left the cockpit, daring to hope that his brief explanation would be enough to stay the curiosities of the others. He wasn't surprised though, when holding on to one of the roof handles, he heard the soft snapping of wary footsteps behind him.

"Hello, Duo." He greeted without turning. Really, who else was it going to be.

"Hey." Duo offered a short, clipped, uncertain word in reply. When Trowa didn't bother to respond, he continued, "Want to talk?"

"No." Trowa still didn't turn, only offering a small jump of surprise when he felt Duo's arms slide around his waist, pulling him tightly against his warm body. "I don't want to do that either."

Duo chuckled softly, resting his chin on the taller boy's shoulder, planting a few kisses on the exposed neck. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to." A few more kisses, a playful bite to the shoulder. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to."

Trowa turned finally, a few tears wetting his eyes as he wrapped his arms around the other boy. From this vantage point he could see that Duo had wisely closed the cockpit door behind them. "Thank you." He murmured, leaning in to plant a grateful kiss on Duo's lips. _Maybe we really are in a relationship_, Trowa mused thoughtfully, _He knows I won't tell him about it. He doesn't think I'm something I'm not._

"Have you checked out these guns?" Duo's hands slipped from Trowa's waist, picking up one of the rifles from the stand as their bodies parted. "I've never seen a railgun before. How do they work?"

"The two rails down the barrel are charged, creating a magnetic field around each. When the projectile connects the rails..."

"No, I mean... how do you use it?" Duo snickered, patting the flustered Trowa on his shoulder.

"Oh, that's easy." Trowa took the rifle from Duo, flipping it around to show the grip. "To charge the rails, you flick this switch on here." He demonstrated, the switch lighting from red to green after a few seconds of ominous humming. "Then you just point the rifle and pull the trigger."

"You've used these before?" Duo asked.

Trowa shook his head. "No, just drooled over them in Guns & Ammo."

"You dork." Duo smirked, poking at Trowa's ribs. "I can see you doing that, playing with your fantasy rifles when everyone was off having fun."

"Like _your_ magazines were any better."

"Oh? And what do you know about my magazines?" Duo grinned, sliding his hips back against Trowa's.

"Uh... guys?" The voice of Quatre interrupted them suddenly, causing both boys to recoil.

"Yeah?" Duo asked with averted eyes, stepping behind Trowa's taller body to hide his burning cheeks.

"We're coming up to... uh... past the Black Sea... that is... when you're ready... see in the cockpit." Quatre turned and left curtly through the door, leaving the two boys to work out a sentence amongst the mortified stammering.

"So." Duo started, staring blankly at Quatre's retreating back before his brain caught up. "I guess we should follow?"

"Yeah." Trowa agreed, adjusting the front of his jeans slightly.

*

The trip through Eastern Europe was as eye opening as their journey through the Middle East. It was hard to imagine the scope of the devastation in a region famous for vast deserts, but the vast seas of blackened, broken European forests left nothing to the imagination. Bare and charred trees, the ground covered with a thick layer of soft white ash; from the air it looked like they were passing through a winter wonderland. The occasional village, town or even city left as barren lifeless husks told a different story: the fire sweeping through the dry forests of a Polish summer had devastated the country absolutely.

"Is there any part of Europe that's not fucked?" Duo asked, staring over Heero's shoulder out the window.

"Spain? The United Kingdom?" Quatre mused. "They're far enough away."

"You're still just guessing." Trowa added from beside Duo. "It could be the whole world, for all we know."

"It's... a possibility I've thought of."

"Yeah?" Duo asked, pressing his side against Trowa. "What would we do then?"

"We would either have to find some way of rebuilding a space port." Quatre turned the co-pilots chair around to face the two boys, blushing furiously when he noticed how close the two were. "Or it is possible the ecosystem will recover. Then we can have a rebuilding plan."

"You seem to have a lot of plans we don't hear about." Heero muttered under his breath.

"Please don't start this again." Quatre said with a downright sulk, staring out the window to avoid looking at the Japanese boy. "I've explained it to you already."

Trowa and Duo shared a glance and a shrug, silently establishing they knew nothing of this argument.

"This mission," Trowa interrupted, slipping his arm around Duo with the sudden acceptance their relationship was no longer a secret. "Why now? Is this girl important?"

Quatre turned back to face them, seemingly glad for the change in subject. Heero just glowered from behind his bangs. "No, she's not important." Quatre explained, "But... to be honest, she's the first contact we've had over the radio. We're planning to rescue as many people as we can find."

"Would've been nice to-" Heero began before he was quickly cut off by Trowa.

"I think we can agree." Trowa said sharply, his gaze fixed on Heero. "That we are best served by helping rescue survivors."

"It's the best fit for our skills." Duo agreed. "Heero's right, though. We need to be told what's going on."

"Don't push it." Quatre ran his hand through his bangs, groaning at the conversation. "The Maguanacs don't trust outsiders. I'm surprised they let me give you any intel at all."

"Doesn't mean you can't fill us in. I thought you were their leader."

"Rashid is their real leader, Heero. I... stepped in, once. But I'm still not one of them yet."

Trowa tightened his grip on Duo's waist, his eyes flicking between the two squabbling boys. They'd only known each other for a few weeks now, but he knew they couldn't fall apart now. Heero was brilliant, impossible to talk to but extremely competent. Quatre practically saved them all when he led them to the base. Ther best hope of survival lay with him and the Maguanacs, no matter how little they shared. Duo was, well... apart from being his boyfriend by default now, Duo was a damn good pilot and exceptional at gathering information. Add to that their common background of the Gundams and surviving the fall to Earth, Trowa couldn't afford to lose any one of them to the petty bickering.

"We're fucked if we don't work together." Trowa ground out in his still, gravelly monotone that demanded the attention of everyone in the small cockpit. "I feel like I should give everyone a speech on teamwork and surviving, but I'm not good at that. So..." One of the things Trowa had not revealed to the other boys was his speed and dexterity. Reaching out with both arms, he gave both Heero and Quatre a hard smack around the head before either could blink, his arms returning to Duo's waist as both boys simultaneously grabbed their skulls and made curses of pain. "Quatre, you are going to get us a meeting with Rashid when we get back and we'll talk about access. Heero, you're going to shut up and get on with the mission. We're nearly there."

Trowa pointed out the window to the approaching landmass at the end of the Baltic Sea. The entire journey had taken less than a day – not bad for a small twin engined plane. Heero nodded silently in his usual way, taking control of the plane to guarantee a low, undetectable entry into Sanc.

"Any radar tracking us?" Duo queried.

"I doubt it." Quatre brought up a screen on the heads up display, one of the cameras had zoomed in to take photos of the surrounding countryside. Blackened and charred, such a common sight now but yet still so hard to get used to.

"I guess it was too much to hope for." Duo grimaced. "If it was untouched she wouldn't need our help."

"I'm getting a location on the distress signal." Quatre announced, bringing up a map to add the waypoint to. The unspoken irony was not lost on any of the boys. The map was still showing the land as a bright, pleasant green.

"We'll be there in five minutes. Get ready." Heero ordered and started strapping himself in, noticing with disdain that the harness was another of the testicle destroying kind. The others quickly followed suit, Quatre likewise fastening the harness on his seat, Duo and Trowa leaving the cockpit to seat themselves in the back.

*

Trowa grimaced, grabbing the seats handles as tightly as he could as his stomach lurched, every other part of his body lurching shortly behind it. He would've preferred Duo's flying to this, Heero seemed to have very limited control of the hover functionality of the plane, the craft swinging around their target like it was being batted about by a giant invisible cat.

"That fucker!" Duo yelled over the deafening roar of air rushing around them. Heero had somehow managed to open the rear hatch during their descent. "That fucker does not get to criticise my flying again! Fucker!"

Mercifully the plane managed to land itself without breaking in a small clearing of broken forest, the crumbling trees and ash cushioning their less than elegant descent. Trowa caught a few deep breaths as they stopped moving, fumbling with his harness as quickly as possible. He managed to get his off just before Duo, leaping to hit the close button and shut the door before more ash could be blown into the plane from the spinning engines.

"Son of a bitch." Duo swore again, ripping one of the rifles out of the stand and slinging it over his back. "If there was still radiation here, he would've just killed us."

"Duo." Trowa cautioned as he reached for his own rifle.

"What?"

"Don't kill him, please."


	8. Chapter 8: Job, Part 1

The four boys stood in the impromptu field surrounding the plane, most of the burnt trees and ash swept away by the powerful blasts of the hovering jets. Each of them was carrying a rifle warily, searching through the thick maze of black logs and dead trees as if it were an alien land.

"So, which way is it from here?" Duo asked finally.

"This way." Heero moved off towards a patch of sparse tree corpses, the others following shortly behind. "Should just be a few hundred metres in this direction." He explained while kicking another crumbling branch out of their way.

"I can't even see it from here." Duo commented, his head bobbing to and fro as he attempted to peer through the collapsed mesh of trees. Their journey was expediated by the fact that most of the trees were so badly burnt that it was possible to just kick through them, reducing the thickest logs to a mess of wood and ash.

"We're going in the right direction." Heero had a small compass out to keep their direction steady. The GPS system had failed after losing contact with most of the satellites in orbit.

"I see something up ahead." Trowa crouched down, bringing his rifle up to look through the scope. "Definitely a shuttle. We're not far."

Swinging the rifle back over his shoulder, Trowa followed the others in their quick jog over the logs and through the light branches of the forest, arriving more quickly at the expense of being covered with a light coating of soot. The shuttle looked like it had landed in a thick copse of trees, judging by the huge amount of collapsed wood that was spread all over the area. It had not been a controlled entry by any stretch of the imagination, it was a miracle that the shuttle was still in one piece. As they approached closer, they could quickly see the path of felled trees the craft had left behind as a wake, before settling down into the sea of ash that served as its current resting place.

They slowed down before they reached the shuttle, Quatre pairing off with Duo and Trowa with Heero, each boy taking up positions at the edge of the artificial clearing with their rifles ready. A small nod from Quatre when the position seemed clear and the boys were swiftly moving towards the downed ship, footsteps crunching softly in the ash as they approached.

"It's amazing she survived this." Quatre whispered as they reached the shuttle's emergency doors, Duo taking up a position on the opposite side. Trowa and Heero passed them by, nodding silently as they continued up to the main passenger doors.

_Are we rescuing them or assaulting them?_ Trowa thought with an internal chuckle as they took position either side of the door. It seemed they also shared a silent paranoia, not going into any situation without a giant gun and military style tactics. _Actually, Heero does seem like the sort to flashbang his bedroom before going to sleep._

There was a large amount of information passing between the boys without a word spoken. Trowa knew that Quatre and Duo were going to wait at that door until they heard Heero and himself move in, at which time they would be abandoning any aspect of stealth. He didn't even have to get a signal from Heero to know when it was time to move, the subtle tensing and relaxing of the other boys' muscles was telling him all he needed to know. Thanks to this he was prepared when Heero slammed the door open with the butt of his rifle, ducking behind the cover of the doorframe to give him enough space to move. Trowa jumped up on the door as it swung down, moving into the shuttle in a low crouch, rifle raised for any possible targets. By unspoken principles he was looking left, he could already feel the movement of air behind him as Heero took up position standing at his back, covering behind him.

"Hands in the air! On your knees!" They both yelled at the same time, though with slight word variations. Eyes trained to look for threats, it wasn't until a few moments later that Trowa was able to assess his surroundings. The various thumps from the back of the aircraft indicated that Duo and Quatre had themselves entered from the emergency door.

The shuttle was still, none of the passengers making a move to raise their hands, though likewise he saw no threatening gestures. It was a few heartbeats before he realised that they wouldn't be moving at all, because they were all dead. Many of them had been thrown around the aircraft on landing, their bodies stacked in the seats, some appearing to have been dragged - by those that survived. But the survivors must not have lasted for long. He could see them here and there: one body slumped against the wall right below a huge bloodstain, his hand still wrapped around his pistol.

"Relena Darlian?" He called out, his eyes scanning for anyone that may have still been alive, if they hadn't scared them to death. He was beginning to entertain the possibility that they might have been too late.

Heero nudged him slightly with his rifle, Trowa turned around to regard Heero's area of the shuttle. It was bare, unlike his own area. There were a few trails of blood here and there, where the survivors must have dragged the bodies away. In the middle of the aisle, there was a short blonde haired girl, no older than they were, kneeling on the floor with her hands in the air. She didn't show a sign of fear on her face, as emaciated and smudged with grime as it was she was completely passive, though he could almost detect the signs of relief in the curve of her shoulders. Kill her or save her, Trowa thought, she probably doesn't care what we do. Anything would be better than trying to live like this.

"I'm Relena Darlian." The girl said finally. Trowa reached over to Heero's rifle, putting his hand over top and lowering it down. The stunned boy just didn't seem to be with it enough to notice.

"I am Quatre Winner." Trowa looked over to the other boy, who had moved behind Relena and was helping her get up. "We're here to help. Are there any other survivors?"

Relena took the assistance gratefully, brushing off her skirt gingerly once she was standing.

She shook her head briefly at Quatre's question. "I thought someone would get here sooner. We've... only a dozen or so people survived... most of them died because we couldn't get them to a hospital." She turned to look at Trowa and Heero, glancing at them both with lowered eyes. "Who are you? Why weren't we rescued? Those people would be alive if we could get them to a hospital."

"We can answer your questions in time, Miss Darlian." Quatre shouldered his rifle, guiding the girl to a nearby seat. "But for now we need to think about getting you out of here. We're going to have to stay the night here, or in our plane. We have to fly during the day."

"Can we stay on our plane?" Duo asked with a grimace. "All these bodies... it's kinda creepy."

"Can you walk, Miss Darlian?" Quatre asked.

"I'm just... tired. I can walk, if I have to. How far is it?"

"Three hundred metres." Heero interjected, taking a step closer to the two. "I can carry her if we need to."

Quatre fished into one of his pockets for a moment, revealing a ration bar. "They taste horrible, but here," He handed over to Relena, who accepted it with a slow nod. "You should eat something."

She fumbled with the packet for a few seconds, finally managing to open the chocolate-like bar. "Thank you." She looked up briefly to give Quatre a shy smile, before taking a bite out of the bar. "I've been surviving on airline food for weeks..." She said with a small smile once she had finished her bite. "It makes this taste like real food in comparison.

"We need to get going soon." Heero called from the door, where he was peering outside. "It's going to get dark and I don't think we can find our trail back at night."

Standing back up, Quatre once again helped Relena to her feet, leaving her in the middle of the single file the group of now five leaving the shuttle.

"This way." Heero called, leading them once again back into the thick charred underbrush of the forest, Relena holding on to Trowa to the annoyed looks of Duo, Quatre holding her arm to make sure she did not stumble.

The walk was not as long as it had been before, fortunately the ash had not been disturbed from their first journey, leaving them a clear path to follow back to the plane.

"I was going to say that leaving the plane unattended was a bad idea." Duo chuckled slighty as he looked on the undisturbed craft, his laughing tinged with sadness. "But I guess there's no one left to steal it, is there?"

"I don't get it," Relena's eyes had never stopped looking back and forth across the devastated landscape, "What happened here?

"It's like this all across Europe." Quatre offered as an explanation, not letting Relena slow down as they talked. "We came from the Middle East, same thing. We don't know how far it's spread."

"This is why no one rescued us? What happened?" Relena started speaking frantically, trying to get the words out faster than her mouth would let her.

"Calm down." Trowa turned to place a steadying hand on the shaking girls shoulder. "We'll explain." His eyes warily scanned the area. "But this isn't the place."

Relena nodded, her grip on Trowa's arm tightening as they reached the plane. Heero and Duo were making themselves busy opening up the massive doors while Trowa and Quatre supported the shivering girl, Trowa noting with some dismay that she was looking incredibly pale. "Just relax," He soothed as they climbed up the metal ramp into the belly of the plane. "Duo, can you grab some stretchers and blankets? They'll make good beds."

Duo nodded and turned away with a second glance at Trowa, who was kneeling down beside the distraught girl.

"When is the last time you ate?" He asked, fingers touching the side of her neck lightly to take her pulse. It was worryingly weak.

"A few days ago." She replied, her body leaning back heavily on Quatre. "I ate the last of the food... I should've rationed it, but I was so hungry..."

"Shhh, it's alright." Trowa soothed, softly stroking her long sandy hair. Survivor's guilt. She was trying to justify every action she had taken to anyone who would listen. Trowa sighed, still stroking her hair as gently as he could manage, whispering soft platitudes under his breath. Catching a quick glance at Quatre's face, he could see the confusion there. Obviously no-one would have expected him to care like this - except it wasn't caring, he was painfully aware of that. He was a good medic, he had been well trained. He was what needed to be done for his patient, as much as he might a plant or a robot, but there was no feeling there while he did so, and that was the scariest thing of all.

Duo returned with the blankets, ignoring Trowa to hand a warmed one to Quatre, who quickly wrapped it around the pale girl. "What's wrong with her?"

Trowa just gave a shrug, standing up now that Relena had drifted off to sleep. "Shock, malnutrition, a lot of things I guess. I'm not a doctor, but I know what happens when someone has been stuck in a crash for two weeks."

"We should let her rest as long as possible." Quatre added, the three of them moving gently to place her on one of the portable stretchers. She looked like death, in the pale artificial light of the plane her gaunt features and sickly pallor were amplified. Quatre had picked up one of her hands gently, worrying over the way the skin seemed to hang off her bones.

"Do we have any medical equipment?" Duo asked, head turning around the room to see if there was anything obvious.

"Nothing useful without a doctor."

"We'd better just leave her then." Trowa took Duo by the hand, taking the other boy with him to the cockpit where Heero was working. Quatre lingered behind for a moment, having difficulty taking his eyes off the girl before he too followed.

"Found anything interesting?" Duo asked Heero as they entered the room, sliding into the co-pilots chair.

Heero turned to regard Duo with a quick glance, "Nothing we didn't already know."

"All quiet?" Trowa guessed.

"Apart from the distress beacon still going out." Heero confirmed. "I'd suggest we keep a watch while we sleep, just in case."

The other boys nodded for a moment, thinking the assessment through. Duo broke away first, leaning over the chair to give Heero a stern glance. "I'm flying back. I'll take the first watch."

Surprisingly enough, there was no protest from Heero, just a small nod of acceptance.

"We should stay up in pairs." Quatre suggested, "Duo and Trowa, then Trowa and myself, then Heero and myself. Unless there are any objections?"

*

Trowa was perched on the cold metal edge of the planes rear exit, sitting out to watch the sun dwindle behind the shattered branches of the surrounding forest. It was beautiful in a way, how the sun was not blocked by the leaves, its final rays playing across the scattered ash. Beautiful, but startling. It had to be a red sunset that night, the light providing the ground with a disturbing red hue, likewise highlighting the bare trees with a burning glow.

Perhaps to an outside observer it would have looked like this, to someone not concerned about choking clouds of smoke or the sudden intense heat. It was the picturesque beauty that made it so startling. It took a sharp eye to see the blackened skeleton leaning against the tree, a bear or some other large mammal that had looked to the Giant Sequoia for refuge from the coming danger only to find it was too late - perhaps even the animal had been smart enough to realise that the tree would be no refuge.

Trowa gave a small glance to Duo as the other boy sat down beside him, not saying a word before returning back to his contemplation of the scene before him. "Do you think the whole world is like this?" Duo asked with no small amount of resignation.

"Who knows?" Trowa responded, trying not to sound like his usual dismissal of conversation but an actual honest attempt at an answer. "Look how far it's gone," He continued when Duo just frowned at him. It seemed he was going to have to provide a bit more than that. "This large an area already? Who's to say that it's confined to here? It's just as likely to be the whole world as not... I think Quatre's just trying to be optimistic."

"Maybe he should be." Duo suppressed a shiver, leaning closer to Trowa once he was done. "Does it matter either way? I mean, what difference will it make if he's wrong? We'd be screwed no matter what we think."

With a brief glance at Duo, Trowa began to realise he was actually starting to feel affection for the other boy. It was odd, a new sensation for him, but he knew that Duo was feeling lonely, unsure... and he actually cared. For lack of any better gesture or words, he wrapped his arm around Duo's shoulders, pulling him closer so the other boy could rest his head on his shoulder, the long braid coiling down around both their laps.

"You see that tree?" Trowa pointed to the one he had seen before, the one now decorated by a skeleton. Duo nodded that he had, a movement Trowa was able to feel more than see.

"It's a sequoia."

"They need forest fires to reproduce. The heat from the fire makes them drop their seeds, which can then grow because the fire destroyed the competing plants. They started to die out because humans living near them would try to prevent fires."

Duo raised his head slightly from Trowa's shoulder, giving the other boy a puzzled look for a moment. "You're saying the forest will grow back?"

Trowa just gave a small shrug in response. "Without humans around, I'm guessing it's going to grow back faster than ever. The planet will forget we were even here."

He felt Duo's head fall back to his shoulder, the braided boy silent against his norm. Trowa was beginning to get the feeling he may have disturbed his lover even more than he had helped, he just didn't know what he could say to make it any better.

"The girl..." Duo finally spoke, waving his hand uncertainly before him. "Relena, that's it. She woke up, Heero's been trying to talk to her. Didn't think he cared."

"He's odd." Trowa tried to recall his encounters with Heero to date, more than happy for the switch in topic.

"No, you're odd." Duo retorted, giving Trowa's neck a quick lick. "He's crazy."

"He's odd." Trowa repeated, squirming away from Duo's tongue as he did so. "But he cares... I guess you just need to find something that he cares about."

Duo said nothing but letting out an exhausted sigh, settling his head back down to Trowa's shoulder. They continued on in the silence, content with listen to each other breathe until Duo fell asleep against Trowa, the soft hitch in breathing the only way he could tell the difference. Happy enough to just sit there with the warmth of Duo pressed against him, he waited out the final hour of their shift before picking up Duo carefully and put him to bed as gently as possible.

*

"So, uh..." Quatre stammered again, much to Trowa's annoyance. The entire shift so far, all two hours of it, had been the blond boy trying to be friendly and talk with Trowa, only to fumble out awkwardness and trip up over his own words.

"Yes?" Trowa snapped with annoyance, "Whatever you want to say, just say it."

"Which one of you plays the girls part?" Quatre blurted, slapping his hand quickly and with some force over his mouth as soon as he said it.

Just raising an eyebrow, Trowa regarded the acutely embarrassed Quatre with some degree of resignation. Letting a lone sigh fall out, he tried to explain. "Seriously, is that what you were worried about? In case it had escaped your notice, we're both male. I know Duo's pretty, but he's still a guy."

Quatre let his hand slip from in front of his mouth, consequently exposing a face that was so mortified with what he had said that Trowa couldn't help but feel some sympathy for the poor boy. "You wanted to ask how it works... physically, is that right?" Trowa couldn't help but let through some coldness into his tone, despite the painful expression on the other teens face as Quatre nodded. "We do both, of course. Now unless you want a practical demonstration, which you're never going to get, can you agree to never bring this up again?"


	9. Chapter 9: Job, Part 2

A/N: Thanks to everyone who has been reviewing so far, you're all great :)

This week's post has been beta'd by cozzybob.

-----

It was morning when Trowa awoke from his all too inadequate sleep, rough and sore from the improvised bedding of seats that were never designed to be comfortable even when you sat in them properly.

It seemed that Heero had not gone to sleep at all, spending the time he was supposed to be on watch keeping Relena up as well. It had just been an inkling at the start, however Trowa was beginning to suspect that indeed Heero did have a heart and he seemed to be willing to give it away to the first girl he met. Of course, there was the irony there that now he was poking his nose into Heero's supposed relationship, something he had been annoyed at Heero for doing just yesterday. Although, Trowa supposed, it could be considered just payback.

Considering that he should check on Relena again, he climbed down the ladder to the lower level of the plane where he found both Heero and Relena right where he left them when he had gone to bed. It appeared they had finally given in to sleep, Relena just passed out on the bed, Heero leaned over and resting his head next to her. Though it could have classed as sweet and adorable, Trowa was only glad for the fact that it was Heero that got to tell her about the firestorms, not him. He was never the most calming influence.

Silently Trowa left them to their sleep, climbing back up the ladder to the main bay, intent on finding either Quatre or Duo so they could get back in the air and out of this burnt botanical graveyard. By chance he found Quatre first, sitting at the rear exit with his legs swinging over the drop, a computer in his lap that he quickly closed upon hearing Trowa's approaching footsteps.

"Has Heero found out anything about the girl?" Trowa asked, stopping to lean on one of the massive hydraulic arms that were holding the rear bay open.

"Relena," Quatre corrected pointedly, swinging his legs back to the floor to stand up as he explained. "Her name is Relena, and he has found out less than he has told her. She was the daughter of the Vice Foreign Minister and accompanied him on his latest trip to the colonies. Her father died immediately following the plane crash."

Trowa just nodded, not hearing anything particularly remarkable in Quatre's assessment of the situation. It seemed they had come all this way just to rescue one girl whose parentage may have been useful a month ago but was of little use now. "I take it we plan to head back, now?" He stated more than asked.

"Duo's preparing the plane at the moment."

Trowa nodded at the response, shifting his weight off the hydraulic arm to leave when he was struck with a sudden thought. "If we had this plane all along, why haven't we used it to scout?"

Quatre stopped his own walk back to the cockpit, not turning his head as he replied, "It's not well shielded against radiation. We need to conserve fuel. We didn't know where to go. There were a lot of reasons, Trowa."

"Yet it was used to rescue a single girl?" He retorted, ignoring the annoyed look he was receiving.

"The first survivor we know of. That's important if nothing else. If she survived, maybe others have too."

Trowa walked away from the other boy, more questions playing through his mind though they were not ones he wanted to voice just yet. He was beginning to believe that Heero may have had a good point, that Quatre and the Maguanacs were holding back much more than they knew: perhaps they were not just minor details or oversights as he had thought before. He would have to have a long discussion with Heero at some point, at least once the other boy was done with Relena.

"Duo." He announced upon arriving in the cockpit, seeing the braided boy sitting in the pilots seat, several generic ship statistics playing across the screen.

"Hey, Tro." Duo swivelled the seat around, his expression softening into a smile. "We're just about ready to go."

"Heero seems a bit... preoccupied, so I guess I'm copiloting for this one." Trowa explained as he sat down, giving a puzzled blink when Duo suddenly grinned, leant over and planted a kiss on his mouth. It was almost embarrassing; they were beginning to act like infatuated schoolboys. The thought did cross his mind that they _were_ infatuated teenagers, so it was probably excusable... still embarrassing, though.

"Let's get started then." Duo had already swivelled back to the controls by the time Trowa had sorted through his surprise, already warming up the engines by the time that Trowa had taken over his own controls.

As the copilot he was charged with all the systems that were not essential to keeping in the air, but still essential were all in place. Thankfully Quatre had made sure the rear exit was shut when he left, leaving him with an easy array of green lights as the plane sealed itself and pressurised. With that done, it seemed like the copilot in this plane had little else to do until they were in the air and he was in charge of system monitoring and navigation.

"All green." Trowa relayed to Duo, tightening the harness around himself as the plane began to shudder. He noticed with some dismay as he did so that the harness was designed for someone much bigger and well, fully grown, so he ended up with most of the heavy buckle hanging just above his crotch; not the sort of place you wanted it in an emergency landing. It would make concentrating on the plane much harder, that was for sure.

Duo wasted no time in getting the plane airborne, surprisingly a much smoother transition than when they had first left. It seemed that after just one flight behind the controls of the plane, he was already an expert on it. _He's a much better pilot than I am_, Trowa thought, biting back a small amount of pride for himself, though strangely he was feeling pride for the other pilot.

The trip itself was uneventful, Quatre seemed to be avoiding the cockpit alltogether and Heero was still downstairs with Relena. That left the two of them alone in the cockpit to talk, which Duo seemed to believe was a requirement rather than just a way to pass the time. Duo had indeed brought out some socialisation in Trowa, but nothing changes that easily. He was still terse rather than verbose, serious rather than animated. Duo never seemed to mind though, happy enough to fill the silence with his own chattering from a seemingly endless pool of topics that he could draw from.

"Are you going to see Brian when you get back?" Trowa asked after a while, stirring Duo out of his meandering story of life on the streets of L2.

"Yeah, I guess so. It's getting harder." Duo admitted, giving the back of his head its customary nervous scratch. "Doesn't even look like him anymore. He's wrapped in so many bandages now it's like talking to a mummy."

Trowa didn't respond, already regretting how he had brought up the subject. He figured that Duo had been going to see the other man on his many exploratory adventures of the base, but he had been ignorant of just how bad his condition was.

"I keep bringing a gun in, ya know? Just in case he wants me to kill him." Duo sighed. His expression somehow managed to provide an even more downcast and heartbreaking look than Trowa had thought possible. "I'd do it. I'd be happy to. He keeps on trying to hide it, but I can tell he's in pain. Shit, if that happened to me I'd be begging you to shoot me."

*

Heero was sitting in the infirmary next to Relena's bed, talking in a situation that had become very familiar to the two over the past day. It had been hours, yet they had found little break between their conversations, stopping as Relena needed to rest only for her to gasp awake minutes later, shaking and grasping for Heero's hand as another nightmare took hold.

"I was sitting down and just crying, I didn't want to be strong anymore, I didn't want to be a leader like father." Her head was held down as she spoke the hushed words, shying from them as if their content was treasonous. "I just wanted it to end, I wanted to die if it meant I wouldn't have to be sitting in filth, starving and surrounded by the dead." She looked up at Heero, her fingers gripping his hand tightly. "Then you came, so beautiful and handsome and strong, my angel coming to rescue me from hell."

"Obviously you were delirious from malnutrition." Heero snorted derisively despite another damnable blush crossing his face. A soldier such as he had no use for fancies like romance, though it appeared that teenage hormones were a more powerful force than his willpower.

"When I became a teenager, my mother said it was no use wishing after boys, hoping for a knight to sweep me off my feet." Her voice hitched as she referred to her mother, throwing the rest of the sentence into barely contained emotion. "She said, 'Be strong and be yourself, when you're happy without a man, that's when you find the right one.'" She lurched from the bed in an ungraceful tangle of tubes and sheets, grabbing a startled Heero by the collar and dragging him closer so she could bury her head in his shoulder as she sobbed. "I don't want to be strong. God, Heero, please... I'll be a simpering, ditzy bitch. I'll set women back a thousand years, I don't give a shit. Just make it go away, please... Heero... just make it go away."

Heero awkwardly wrapped his arms around her in a loose hug, his mouth working silently to speak words that would not form. He was usually silent, true, but it was a silence of his own volition. This was the first time he had found himself unable to talk when he had actually wanted to. Working his arm around her back, he rubbed a hand soothingly up and down her spine as she sobbed warm tears into his shirt.

With a final sniff she worked her way off Heero's chest, pulling back to sit herself solidly on the hospital bed. "I know I'm being selfish." She wiped the baggy sleeve of the overlarge patient gown over her eyes, wiping away the tears that hadn't been soaked up by Heero. "I know everyone else has lost as much as me... I just don't think I can cope."

Heero looked away from her, trying to avoid her tearful eyes and wishing he had a better way with words. Quatre might explain to her that everyone was hurting as much as she was, but they were pulling together to survive and she'd find that strength too. Duo might say that the rest of them were so damaged emotionally that she was the only one having a normal reaction so far. Trowa might... when he thought of what Trowa had done to help cope with the stress he was struck with a foolish impetus. Reaching out his hand to lightly touch Relena's cheek, he brought his face close to the surprised girl, their noses lightly brushing as Heero moved in for the kiss. He brushed his lips slightly across hers, pleased when they opened just slightly enough to give him permission to take it further. He kept it soft and slow, chaste and tender but passionate enough to leave her breathless when he finally let her go.

_Take that, Trowa_, he thought with a smug sense of satisfaction. _Your girl didn't look this pleased when you kissed him._

"You don't need to worry." Heero soothed as Relena stared on wordlessly with overjoyed wonder. "You're here now, you're safe. We can work through this."

Weak words to be sure, but they seemed to work well enough on Relena. She settled back into the bed with a smile on her face, content to let Heero continue stroking her hair as she drifted off into a peaceful sleep.

Heero sat there in wonder, absentmindedly brushing out the tattered and knotted locks of Relena's hair. He was feeling confused and guilty in many ways, not the least of which the growing feeling that he was manipulating the girl with her attraction to him, when he could not tell if his affections were directed at her, or as he suspected guilt over a similar young girl he had killed not long ago.

It had not been long after he was recruited by Doctor J, he had been sent on a mission to infiltrate an Alliance military base located on one of the L1 colonies. The mission had begun smoothly, he had made his way to the base commander without being detected and had cleanly slit the mans throat before he could raise an alarm. The complications came shortly after that, when the commander's teenage daughter had come back from the adjoining toilets to find Heero standing over the corpse of her father, bloody knife in hand. He had no choice but to chase down the hysterical and grief-stricken girl, to silence the threat to his identity. She had struggled and run, but after several glancing stab wounds she had succumbed to the loss of blood that had begun decorating the hallway. Eyes full of tears, she asked Heero what she had done to deserve this, in the end begging for her life moments before he slit her throat.

The girl had looked remarkably like the one lying before him now, with sandy blonde hair and the oddly determined features of someone that did not take their birthrights for granted. Like Relena, she had been the daughter of a powerful man and even his brief interaction with her as she ran terrified, bleeding from the wounds he had inflicted, he could tell she would have been a strong woman, much like the one he had in his arms now. She did not stand petrified and helpless, nor did she expect a hero to save her. She had taken her life on herself, trusting in her own abilities to lose Heero... and when that had not worked, she had negotiated, begged. But she never gave up, not until the moment she had been butchered like cattle.

*

"Hey, Heero." Trowa leaned through the doorway of Relena's room, whispering softly to avoid waking the girl.

"Yes, Barton?"

"Come on out here." Trowa motioned with his hand for Heero to follow him, slipping out the door into the corridor. It did not take long for Heero to follow suit, entering the corridor himself to find Trowa leaning against the wall, holding a stack of papers to his side.

"I've got some bad news," Trowa explained, a grim expression plastered over his face. "She has radiation poisoning. Not severe, but it's enough to be lethal." He waved the stack of papers at Heero, as if they were there to provide some semblance of authority to the statement.

"What is this?" Heero replied with a growl, snatching the papers out of the other boys hand.

"Medical reports." Trowa looked on with some sympathy as Heero flipped through the stack of papers, empathising with his pain but somehow unable to express that in words. "Her bone marrow is destroyed, the only option is a transplant and at the moment there's just no way..." He trailed off, realising logically that his clinical words were doing nothing to help, but that was all he had.

"Isn't there a doctor that should be telling me this?" Heero narrowed his eyes dangerously at Trowa and for once the former mercenary actually felt uncertain. It was not hard to guess the capabilities of the stoic Yuy, the few exhibitions of speed and strength he had witnessed had been enough to respect his abilities and finding himself looking into the unspoken threat in Heero's eyes, he began to see why no one had been willing to break the news to him.

"It seems I'm the only one not scared of giving you bad news." Trowa reasoned, shrugging off his own annoying nerves. "You've intimidated pretty much everyone here." He added in a tone that spoke more of amusement than reprimand.

"Fuck!" Heero snapped, slamming the papers against the door in a futile display of anger, only managing to spread the reports into falling in a slow shower down to the corridor floor.

"Case in point." Trowa snorted, though the outburst had been more amusing to him than intimidating.

"What the fuck is your problem?" Heero rushed Trowa, grabbing him by the shoulders to slam him against the wall as he snarled out the words, shaking the taller boy against the hard concrete when he proved too dazed to respond. "People say I'm cold, I've got nothing on you. Asshole."

Grabbing hold of Heero's arm to steady himself, Trowa shook off the dizziness that was taking hold of him. It would be pointless to try to fight the other boy, but that seemed to be where it was heading. "I'm sorry." He apologised, quickly taking his hand away when Heero got ready to retaliate. "I don't... sorry." He wanted to say that he really did sympathise with Heero, that he wished he could help in some way. He wanted to say that he didn't intend to be cold, but dry words and dark humour was how he coped with uncomfortable or emotional situations. He wanted to say that he understood, because he had been there before.

He said none of those things, the words caught in his brain by years of emotional indifference. Heero let him go with another small shove, the pained looked on the Japanese boys' face enough for Trowa to revise his approach.

"If... if something like that happened to Duo, I... wouldn't know what to do. It would hurt." There, he said it. Those small token words were hard enough to say for Trowa, to actually admit weakness like that went against everything he had done in his short life. At least they seemed to reach Heero, the Asian boy nodding wordlessly before he regarded the door behind him, the door that lead to Relena's room.

"How do I tell her?" He asked simply.

"She already knows." Trowa answered just as plainly, motioning to the papers scattering the floor. "The symptoms are... they will not have been pleasant for her. She must already know."

*

"Heero?" Relena asked as the door to her room opened, already awake and sitting up in her bed. Several days had passed since the news of her illness had come to her and Heero had spent every waking hour by her side. Every hour that she had seemed to become more and more ill, her skin covered with the same sickly pallor and her hair thinning, becoming impossibly sparse for a young girl as it fell out in clumps.

"How are you feeling today?" Heero asked as he appeared from around the door, a thin smile on his face as he caught sight of the girl.

"Tired, Heero. It's starting to hurt again."

"Is there anything I can do?" Heero asked, taking his customary seat beside her bed.

"Heero." Relena dipped her head, patchy strands of hair falling over her face. "We both know how this is going to end."

"Don't." Heero took a hold of her hand, choking out the word even before her request. It was obvious, it was something he thought of every night. When was she going to ask him. What would he do when she finally did? "Please, don't ask me to do this."

"Heero, I'm sorry." She weakly gripped his hand, trying to look Heero in the eyes, though the boy was refusing to look, his eyes hiding behind his bangs.

"I'm not going to do it, Relena." He stood up, finally showing her eyes rimmed with tears and determination. "There's going to be some other way. I swear it to you."

"Heero." She was saying his name like a mantra now, hoping that the single word would reach him where logic wouldn't.

"No, Relena." He let her hand drop down as he turned to the door, reverting back to his awkward avoidance of her gaze. "They have doctors. I'll look, I'll find a place that has survived. I'll get supplies, anything they need. I won't give up on you."

Closing the door before she could protest, he took off down the corridor to find Quatre. Trowa and Duo would be certain to help him, if only for something to do. So focused in his thoughts on what he needed to do, he was halfway down the corridor before he felt something was off. With a sense of dread, he reached into his jacket to find that his gun was missing, the lack of weight causing the odd sensation that had been nagging at him.

He turned back down the corridor, a feeling of helpless inevitability washing over him.

The gunshot echoed down the cold walls.


	10. Interlude: The Diary of Sally Po

Author's Notes: Yikes, it's been over a year since I updated. Sorry! I decided a few months ago not to bother posting until I had completed the story, which I have finally done. Now that it's complete, I'll be posting a new chapter every week until it's done, giving me some time to edit any of the chapters.

The Diary of Major Sally Po

Day 1:

I've taken the advice of one of our NCOs and set up a log. If help arrives and I'm too out of it, or worse, too dead to talk, we will have a record of what happened here.

We don't know what happened. There was a massive rumbling, a tremor like we were having an earthquake. Pretty uncommon around here, but most of us just ran to the doorways and under desks. Then all the windows in the building blew out, spraying glass everywhere. I was lucky, I was in my office at the time but we had a lot of injuries. Because they were in a hospital we didn't have anyone bleed out, but I know others in the city weren't so lucky.

All of our doctors have been too busy with the injured, so I'm in charge of the clinic now. We've set up emergency triage in nearly every room in the hospital, we've even needed to use the morgue for operations. People are coming in from all over the city, the civilian hospitals have been overflowing. I doubt we'll get more though, I can already see the fires surrounding the city.

A staff sergeant that was on security detail was trained in communications. We've got him at the top of the building trying to set up radio contact. It would only take four days for outside help to reach us, so we need to be able to contact them when they arrive.

Day 2:

Didn't sleep much last night. The only surprise was that I managed to get the sleep that I did, fleeting as it was. A hospital is never a restful place, but now the corridors echo with anguished voices even more profoundly.

It may have been the vast overcrowding of the city that saved us. The suburbs have gone up like matchsticks, but we seem to be safe in the middle of the city. Concrete and glass everywhere, there's nothing to burn. Those caught outside weren't so lucky. The streets are filled with charred corpses, bodies half sunk into the boiled tar that has now solidified. They look like statues now, caught forever trying to crawl their way out of their black shells.

There have been a few cases of looting and violence, but not as many as expected. There's a sinister, heavy feeling spreading. No use in possessions if you know you're going to die. I'd call them superstitious, but I'm starting to feel it too. Nothing so passe as an ominous feeling of doom, but a physical force, hot and heavy, pressing down against every available area of skin.

The staff sergeant has been complaining about the radios. He's resorted to sending out some of the privates to dig around appliance stores, but nothing they bring back works. Just in case he can't get anything working in time, I ordered some of the men to dig around the old port authority building for flares and emergency beacons. Anything to signal rescuers.

Day 3:

Patient after patient and it's all palliative care. No life saving treatment, no cures, just ease their suffering until death inevitably takes them. We're missing something, but I don't know what. Under normal circumstances there is not a person in this building we could not save. Maybe it's because we rely too much on our now useless equipment, but even without it half the people dying should be saved. Severe burns should not be life threatening in a hospital, but something is eating away at these people from the inside, causing even the fittest to become sickly and unable to fight off the spreading infections.

If we don't get help soon, the only ones left will be the uninjured.

All twelve of us.

Day 4:

Still no sign of rescue. A group of the sergeant's men went to the helipad to shoot off some of the flares, but they said it was unlikely to be seen amidst the embers or the smoke. Looking out the window, the columns are so thick and rising so high it looks like a volcano went off under the city. There's no way they missed that signal, so they must be unable to get to us. Another reason we need those radios working. The generators are only powering the basics at the moment, but unless we find more fuel we only have a few days of power left.

I hate myself for it, but I've been using this journal to avoid going back on the floor. I can't put it off any longer, these people need me. Even if it is only to comfort the dying.

Day 5:

I feel like Agnes Bojaxhiu when I walk through the floors of the wards. I am doing nothing for them now, not even to ease their suffering. Just keeping them hidden out of sight from the others as one by one their pained moans stop forever. When a few days ago we were keeping people alive at all costs, we have all but stopped now. Even if our medical supplies would hold steady, how much longer can we keep someone suffering until they beg us to let them go?

On the sign outside, in dirty paint someone has sprayed "House of the Dying" over the quickly forgotten name of the hospital. Even if I had the time to remove it, I cannot bring myself to do so.

Sleep still comes too rarely and each meal comes back up more easily than it goes down. I can only hope it is due to the conditions.

Day 6:

The light at the end of the tunnel was a deadly glow.

We had a great moment of hope and triumph earlier this morning when some of the army engineers had managed to get several machines in the diagnostic and radiology department back to some semblance of working order. The mood lightened in even the darkest hearts of hopeless cases, and we shuffled a representative sample of patients through to get what limited information we can on our high rate of mortality. Maybe it was an unspoken thought, something so awful yet so possible we did not want to entertain thinking it. But once a medical scanner returned a usually unseen error, we all knew the implications.

Error: Accumulated radiation too high: patient risk.

We had no archaic devices made to sweep for radiation around the hospital. Any device that would emit radiation would warn the physician before operation, or would not function if it detected the patient had already absorbed too much. I tested myself in case it was just a unique case. No such luck. Occam's razor had cut through our hopeful assumptions that infection, bad treatment or mysterious ailment had caused the quick deaths. No, simply the blast had carried such radiation that it shut down the immune system of anyone fighting an injury and would soon shut down the bodies of those who had not.

Day 7:

Another bullet, another dull thud as a body hits the floor. There's no hope left to go around. Some of the soldiers agreed to the soul destroying task of executing those who ask for it. I can't stop them, even if I wanted to. A phrase I have been saying a lot lately. Something happens that is horrible, that shocks the conscience. Can I stop it, do I even want to if I could? I can't give any medical care to the suffering, I can't even offer the comforting lie that their deaths will be anything but agonising terror.

I have longer than most people here and more knowledge of what my death will be like. I can't take up the quick death offered by a bullet, but instead I will do what I can before I shit my kidneys up against a wall. We will take all the bodies to the department store across the road, which is being rigged with explosives already. The last of us will detonate the bombs and bury us all inside. The barest amount of dignity we have left, one last scrap of control we can wrest from a universe that has taken it all away. We can decide how we will be interred, together under a great cairn.

If you get this message... well.

Fuck you, why didn't you get here sooner?

No, even that last comforting hatred I cannot manage. It would not matter if you did.

We were people. We died here.

Major Sally Po, United Earth Sphere Alliance


	11. Chapter 11: Psalms

Trowa sprinted down the bare corridor, Duo's footsteps slapping on the floor close behind him. They had both broke into a run the second the gunfire sounded out, needing no discussion, only quick reaction.

Seeing the dead-still figure of Heero standing in the corridor, he slowed down to a jog, trying to take in the scene. Shouldn't he be looking into the gunshot as well?

"Heero?" Trowa asked quietly as he stopped, the hall filling with silence after the final notes of Duo's slowing shoes. "Heero, what happened?" The boy was looking pale, much paler than usual. Standing there with the distraught expression on his face, he seemed to give literal meaning to the expression scared to death.

"Don't..." Heero raised his arm to block Trowa from going any further, simply stating the one word as if it could give all the explanation anyone would need.

"What's going on?" Trowa asked in retort, his hand briefly touching the restraining arm. He glanced past the arm, down the corridor to where he knew Relena's room lay. The gunshot... Relena... Heero, it all clicked into place as he stared blankly down the hall.

"Trowa?" Duo asked from behind when no response was forthcoming from either of them.

Trowa turned back, taking a hold of Heero's now strangely pliant arm to lay it over Duo's shoulder. "Take him back to our room." He half ordered, half requested. "Don't ask, just... let me sort it out."

Duo nodded slowly, no stranger to blank orders and little information. "Come on, then." He quipped cheerily to Heero, dragging his morose comrade along with him. Trowa watched as they left with some trepidation, part of him wondering if it would a good idea leaving Duo with a soldier that could be so close to snapping.

It made it all the more surprising when Heero's head turned, silently giving him a look of thanks before he let Duo carry him away.

The room was not a pretty sight. Trowa had seen a lot of deaths in his short life, but suicide was always the most disturbing. There was something about them that you could just instantly recognise as soon as you saw their face – that is, assuming their face was recognisable. And despite Relena having bit the barrel of a gun, hers still was. Something about the gunshot going off inside the mouth would leave the head intact, and if there wasn't the fine spray of blood painting the wall behind her, it would have looked like she had missed.

"I'm sorry, Relena." He didn't know what he was apologising for, but it seemed like the right thing to do. There was nothing, even in the most detached and analytical parts of his brain that could put reason in front of emotion while staring at the blood spattered young woman in front of him.

"Oh god." Breathed a voice from the far corner of the room. Lifting his eyebrows, Trowa turned to see Quatre staring across from the far corner of the room, hand delicately covering his mouth.

"Suicide." Trowa announced solemnly, reaching over to slide her lids over the vacant eyes. "She had a terminal dose of radiation. Can't blame her."

Quatre left the room shortly after that, only leaving behind a few pale words about grief and poor Heero. Trowa barely heard him, already busying himself with the thankless task of the undertaker. Pulling her body away from the wall by her ankles, letting her fall down flat to the gurney. Wrapping the bloodstained sheets over until she was encased in them, then pulling her wrapped body into the black canvas bag that had been seen far too often. Everything emotionless, everything methodical.

"I wish I knew what to say." Continued his low monologue to the dead girl he was preparing. "To you maybe, or to Heero. Everyone's putting on a brave face, but inside... we're slowly coming apart. At least I know I am. But we won't stop to fix it, because that's not what people do. We'll just... crumble. But what do I know?" He left Relena there, lying on the table in a body bag, but not before leaving one last thought. "What do I know? I'm fourteen. Fourteen and I was never meant to live past this operation. Maybe you had the right idea."

*

"How's Heero?"

"Emotionally distant, not speaking." Duo snorted, leaning back against Trowa's chest. "So no change, really."

They had both hidden themselves away in the hangar, perched on a gantry high above the vehicles below. A familiar place for the couple that wanted some privacy now and again, one of the few places on the base where their conversations could not be overheard, drowned out as they were by the sound of the mechanics below endlessly tinkering with the machines.

"So..." Trowa started, his hand haltingly coming to a rest on Duo's shoulder.

"So?" Came the confused reply of the other boy.

"What do we do? Wait to just die, like Relena?"

Duo snorted, "She hardly waited to die."

"Well, I say we don't wait. We're sitting around waiting for Quatre to find more information... what use is that information going to be?"

"Tro..." Twisting around in the embrace, Duo turned to face Trowa, reaching up to lay a hand on his check. "I know how you feel. You just want to do something, right?" A short nod under his hand. "We're creatures of action, I know. We're safe here, though. This isn't something we can fight."

They lay back there in the gantry, letting the silence stretch out before them as they each lost themselves in their own minds. Death, survival, the whole world. It was a situation that all the limitations of the human mind failed to grasp. The cracks of that failure were beginning to show.

"If we can't fight, what use are we?"

Duo's mouth opened and shut soundlessly a few times as his tongue failed to wrap itself around a response. He knew he should say something, something soothing, anything at all, but the words were just refusing to form. What use was he, after all, if he couldn't even be expected to produce platitudes? Fortunately, he was rescued from his responsibility by the ringing clank clank of heavy boots on the flexible metal walkways that lead up to the gantry.

"Heero?" Trowa called out as he recognised the approaching figure. He shared a look with his partner, silently pondering that the grieving boy should be out so soon. "What are you doing here?" He queried, just as the other boy climbed the final rungs of the ladder leading to their hidden platform.

"I'm tired of waiting." Heero sat down opposite the couple, crossing his legs and leaning slightly forward though refusing to make eye contact, keeping his head bowed. The tell-tale puff redness around his eyes said all that the boy refused to.

"Funny," Duo gave his boyfriend a brief, pointed look. "We were just talking about that. But we have no ideas."

"Find out what happened." Heero raised his head finally to look the other two in the eye, the force of his gaze not lessened by the evidence of his tears. "No... not what, why. It wasn't an accident. It happened for a reason."

"If we know why, we know what we can do." Duo finished for the other boy.

"Depending on what that why is." Trowa interjected.

"Or how we find it."

Heero nodded quietly along. "We do have one lead. Zechs Merquise."

Both the other boys seemed to ponder this for a moment, before Trowa queried, "He's still not awake... though, if he was caught up in the blast, how likely is it that he knew it was coming?"

"Unlikely, I admit." Heero replied, "But he may have known something that he couldn't piece together. Constructing a large, underground bunker. Stocking radiation suits. Maybe sabotaging colonies."

Trowa nodded in agreement, "That would point us to the people in OZ behind all this."

"Uh, guys..." Duo took a step to the edge of the walkway, gripping the cold metal rails as he gazed out on the bunker. "Large, underground bunker?" He pointed to the bare concrete ceiling. "Radiation suits?" His finger turned to the entrance to the Maguanac bunker, with all its decontamination equipment still in place. "Sabotaging colonies - like Operation Meteor? That doesn't sound like OZ, that sounds like _us_."

"Oh, _fuck_."


	12. Chapter 12: Revelations

"What did you do?" Trowa snarled, throwing the other boy roughly down to the floor. Quatre barely caught himself, hands going out to save from being sprawled on the floor.

"Ow, Trowa, what the fuck?" Turning himself over, Quatre looked up with a shocked expression of injured surprise.

Quatre turned over so he was sitting up, letting him shuffle back as Trowa advanced on him. "Heero, help me!"

Heero stood back in the doorway of the room, arms crossed with one hand holding one of the ubiquitous document folders. He made no move to help Quatre. "We found some interesting files in Sandrock."

Quatre paled at the words, his eyes glancing between Heero and Trowa as he realised he couldn't talk his way out of this. He sprang into action instead, leveraging his advantage on the ground to catch Trowa in a leg sweep, taking to taller boy by surprise and knocking him to the ground. Pressing home his advantage he rolled closer to his prone opponent, using the momentum of the roll to slam his elbow down on Trowa's ribs.

Trowa yelled out in pain, sure that he heard a crack in there somewhere when Quatre's elbow impacted him. The little fucker was stronger than he thought. No time to dwell, he needed to get up. Quatre would nearly be on his feet and he was an easy target just lying on his back. Rolling to one side, he prepared to use the momentum to stumble to his feet, only to be greeted with a swift kick to his chest, throwing him violently back to the floor. Faster than he thought, too... but no matter, he wasn't going down that easily. Grabbing one leg of the nearby end-table he swung it at Quatre's incoming kick, the furniture shattering as it impacted against his assailants shin.

Nor did Trowa get off lightly: his shoulder snapping back with sharp pain under the force of the blonds boot, his balance suffering enough under the stress to bring him to the ground. But the injury was an oppourtunity, one he was happy to take. Wrapping both ankles around Quatre's stabilising leg he twisted his body, forcing Quatre backwards at the end of his kick and into a graceless heap on top of Trowa. Not one to avoid an opportunity, Trowa wrapping an arm around the other boys neck, pressing down hard on the windpipe as the body he was supporting struggled frantically.

A sharp elbow to Trowa's armpit managed to score Quatre freedom, but it was too late for him by then. Dizzy and winded from prolonged strangulation, he was not match for the two boys now working in concert, each one bending an arm back to the point of snapping out of their joints, forcing him down on his knees with no chance of escape.

"We want answers." Was the growled demand in his ear, the anger he had never heard before in that voice making it barely recognisable as Heero.

Quatre did nothing for a moment but glower defiantly at the wall, unable to turn his sight to his once comrades. No, there was no way he could give answers, even if he knew exactly what was coming.

Not to be disappointed in that prescience, a dull crack accompanied searing pain when one of his arms was torn from its socket, only stopped from falling uselessly to his side by Heeros firm grasp.

"We already know what you did."

Quatre gave a short series of abrupt snickers, trying as he was to appear dignified while pained and breathless. "If you already know, why are you demanding answers? Or is this just some recreational sadism?"

He found himself abruptly thrown to the ground, only one of his arms able to catch himself. It would appear that Trowa did not have the same stomach for this.

"We know what, you need to tell us is why." Throwing doubt on his previous assumption, Trowa followed the words with a merciless kick to his side.

No, the last thing he needed was for them to find out why, not for an answer that he could only partially justify to himself. But he knew their training was no less comprehensive than his own, for the perfect terrorists. There was only one outcome to torture: telling everything, true or not, just to make it stop. Pain could be taught to be resisted, but not nearly as effectively as that same training would teach them how to inflict it. He could not resist forever, but he did not need to. Time was on his side, not theirs. The Maguanacs would come looking.

The next few hours were trying, not just for Quatre, but for Trowa as well. A stony exterior often betrays a soft heart, and Trowa still had someone to live for; Heero did not. With her death, it seemed he lost his pity - especially for the one he blamed. As Trowa held the boyish faced teen in his arms, his hand stifling agonised screams that could alert others, Heero worked on breaking the boy the best he could until at last between fearful gasps and sobs truths and half-truths came out.

"What did you find- holy fucking shit what did you do to him?" Duo's eyes nearly bulged from his head as Quatre was dragged discreetly into the room.

"What we had to." Came Heero's cool reply as let go of their prisoner, Quatre only prevented from falling to the ground by Trowa comparatively more tenderly dragging him to the bed.

"No, really - what the fuck?" Duo rushed to the bed, brushing Trowa aside as he crouched over the huddled form of the Arabian boy. "No - don't fucking touch me." He abruptly shoved his boyfriend back as he felt the companionly hand rest on his shoulder.

"It wasn't him, Duo. It was me." Heero stood next to Duo's opposite shoulder, drawing a relieved and thankful glance from Trowa. It would seem there were still some people that Heero lived for.

"Does it matter? You were there, Trowa, you might as well have been braking his fingers yourself. Is this what we're becoming?"

"The whole world, Duo. All the colonies. Earth. All of humanity. Everyone." Heero stood by the bed to glare down with uncaring eyes at his villain. "I don't think I needed to ask why we have been gathering refugees here."

A sharp silence, then a small voice. "Everyone?" Duo backed away from the bed, his face defying the impossible and turning even paler. "Why everyone? Why... what?"

The emotions of the room fell in stark contrast. For Duo, bewilderment and shock as his brain, evolved to only grasp the here and now, the near and seen, ran into a wall his understanding could not penetrate. For Heero, cold and calm, with all the clarity of purpose of a nihilist. For Trowa, eyes showing the barest hints of damp, the vastness of destruction was unimportant next to the rejection of the only one that mattered.

"All he would say is that he had to stop the voices in his heart. He's insane, Duo. There was no reason for it." The room stood still for moments longer once the explanation had passed Heeros lips. Duo slumped, bowing his head and leaning into Trowa who happily accepted the distraught Duo into his arms.

"There may be someone else," Trowa carefully said, gingerly stroking his boyfriends back. "He said that Zero showed him the way."

"Zero?" Duo looked up, one hand wiping away stubborn tears. "I saw that in his Gundam. It was all over the systems, some sort of neural interface."

"It showed me the way." Came the timid, strangled voice from the bed. "The way to peace."

"Your peace is everyone dies?" Duo snarled, only held back by the firm arms around him.

"Don't bother, Duo." Heero turned his back to them, walking over to the sacks on the floor that now held their equipment. "We'll leave immediately."

"What about him?" Trowa reluctantly broke from his embrace of the smaller boy, joining Heero in slinging one of the packs over his shoulder.

"We take him with us, we'll need a hostage to get out."

"What about the refugees? Are we just leaving them here?" Despite his own hesitations, Duo joined the others in preparing to leave.

"We have to." Heero explained. "There are too many of Quatre's men to fight without our mobile suits, and if we use those the civilians die in the crossfire. We leave the evidence behind. I doubt they're in on it, they'll take care of the refugees - as long as Quatre is out of the way."

Quatre was hauled from the bed and briskly handcuffed, still quiet and timid as they did so, a meekness that could do nothing but tug at Trowa's guilty conscience. Like the well trained soldiers they pretended to be, they filed out of the room and down the lifeless corridors. Trowa led the procession with Duo at his side, tightly locked together with his arm around Duo's hip to shield the shambling Quatre from curious eyes. Heero followed behind, his hand firmly grasping the elbow of their prisoner. Their flight to the hanger would be the hardest part of the entire plan. One unlucky passerby, or worse, someone who needed to talk to Quatre, and the whole base could turn against them in minutes. All they had was the element of surprise and an unpredictable hostage. The small sidearms stashed in the waistbands of their pants of the pockets of their jackets would not be enough if it came down to a firefight.

Progress through the base was barely any faster than their walking, interrupted continually by Heero quickly clamping his hand over Quatre's mouth to avoid him crying out followed by the other two ushering them into an abandoned side room or closet until the unwelcome footsteps had passed. The docility of their captive was becoming more and more of a concern to the three. Quatre had proved to be a tactical and calculating manipulator, there was no doubt that he was already planning their sabotage.

"I'm sure there was a faster way to the hangers." Grumbled Duo, shifting the weight of his rucksack as they cut through another abandoned room. Their disjointed meandering through the less well travelled corridors of the underground complex was painting a picture of the bunker as being built for far more than the few hundred refugees currently occupying it.

"But not a safer way."

"Yeah, I get that, Heero. But we could just make a run for the hanger. We'd be out of here before they know what we're doing."

"We still can if we have to." Trowa put in as they finished their minor break in the sneaking. "This way we're much closer to the hanger if we start our run."

"There's no way we could run that far with Quatre." Heero added. "We'd have to kill him."

"That's not an option." Growled Duo back, fixing the Japanese boy with a stern glare.

Heero did not reply, just taking their silent prisoner by the elbow once again and leading them to the door, where Duo went ahead to scout the corridor for any possible passers-by. Once the all-clear signal was given, the grim procession started up once again as Trowa and Heero caught up and led the small blond down another of the endless corridors.

"Hey!" A sharp yell sounded from an adjacent room, followed by one of the Maguanacs striding out of the doors and towards the group. It could have been that the man wanted to finish up with "What's going on?", but was unable as the boys sprang into action. One hand drawing his sidearm from the small of his back, Heero quickly dragged Quatre into the position of a human shield, his other arm tightly pressed against the blond's windpipe as his gun drew level with his hostage's temple. With reflexes just as quick, Duo sprang at the offending man, his body spinning in the air to lend weight to a perfectly executed circular kick to the target's jaw. Following perfectly predictable laws of physics, the man's head snapped quickly to the side, a meaty thud sounding as its travels abruptly found a wall. The body slid down the rough concrete, a small trail of smeared facial blood leaving a gruesome mark. Duo landed in a crouch just as the man hit the floor, turning to see Trowa lowering the pistol he had just raised and Heero with a gun to his once friend's head.

"Don't you fucking dare." Snarled Duo, bouncing lithely back up and rejoining the others. "We carry him. Let's go."

Heero just gave a simple nod, letting none of his intentions be betrayed by his expression. Bringing his gun under control of both hands, he stepped forward to take point and let the other two take hold of their prisoner. Trowa hooking one arm under Quatre's shoulder and Duo the other, the trio broke into a run down the corridor, the blond being dragged between them with all the care of a butchered animal.

"Straight through... this way!" Heero yelled as they ran around the final intersection to the main access corridor, firing a single shot into one of the Maguanacs unlucky enough to be deemed a threat in his split-second calculation. Trowa and Duo - and by extension, Quatre - thundered past seconds after, just in time for the shocked man to fall to the floor clutching a small but significant hole in his abdomen.

"Heero, you take the control room and get the hanger doors open. We'll put Q in Deathscythe." Duo called out just as they were about to enter the hanger, receiving a brief nod from Heero who had already managed a significant lead over the burdened pair. Both Trowa and Duo pulled out pistols with their free hands, each one knowing in some way they would have a fight on their hands.

As soon as they entered the hanger, the size of the room floored them as if they were seeing it for the first time. The gantries, walkways and cranes spanning the immense concrete canyon were daunting enough when visiting on friendly terms, but they took on a whole other light of maliciousness when they were the winding maze leading to freedom and holding any number of enemies. It was not a sight that had seemed to daunt Heero, already leaping across thin metal rails to reach his target with unwavering single mindedness, but it was a sight that held promise for Quatre, who dug his heels in at the prospect of potential nearby allies, squirming in an attempt to get free of their hold.

"Hel-!" To Trowa's surprise it was Duo who brought the stock of his gun down with unnerving quickness on the base of Quatre's skull, cutting off his cry of help and dropping him in a boneless heap to the floor. Raising a critical eyebrow as they both bent down to pick up their unconscious prisoner, the only response Trowa got was another eyebrow raised in return and a short shrug. It would seem Duo's compassion did not extend to putting them in danger.

The sharp cracks of gunfire warned them of their lack of time, Heero having already begun a firefight in the control room. Hauling the dead weight of their prisoner between them once again, they rushed up the stairs - not willing to take the vulnerable elevators - that would lead them to the walkway crossing their cockpit.

"This is not working." Trowa sighed, dropping Quatre's arm at their only rest between stairs. "We have to leave him behind."

"We're not killing him. I'll drag him up myself if I have to." Duo groaned, dropping his load for a moment to look around the hanger. Fortunately for them, there were few Maguanacs overall, even fewer happened to be in the hanger at the time of their raid. The few that were armed seemed to be clustered worriedly around the control room, occupied by the firefight with Heero. The others that weren't seem to have fled to get weapons, or worse, backup.

"Put him in the elevator." Trowa suggested from behind him. "We need to take the risk."

Duo nodded, willing to accept the compromise. Though not normally the silent type, he was willing to let enough be unsaid and mutually understood with Trowa. With that silent plan in place, Duo linked his arms between Quatre's and hauled him up, slowly dragging him to the elevator that Trowa had ran ahead to call. Their luck still holding, the cab arrived not long after he had managed to scrape the unconscious blond's legs over the metal floor and to the waiting Trowa. Unfolding the doors, the boys threw their prisoner in, Duo leaning inside to hit the button for the correct floor before ducking out and shutting clanking barrier back into place. With a short nod, the two began their mad dash to the top in perfect time with the leisurely ascent of the elevator cab.

Focused on nothing but their climb, the two were ignorant of Heero's situation, having only to trust in their companion that he would be able to complete his task. If not, they would have to blast through the heavy doors of the bunker, no easy task and one that would put all the inhabitants at horrible risk. But there was no time for looking back, for looking around or looking down. They had to complete their task with the same determination that Heero would complete his. Lungs burning, arms and legs aching and their hands barely able to keep a jelly like grasp on their sidearms, they reached the top walkway at the same time the elevator had shuddered to a stop.

"Don't like this." Duo wheezed, sparing a vital second to catch his breath. "Little things don't go wrong... means a big shit thing's gonna go wrong."

Failing to acknowledge or even dismiss him, Trowa just wrapped his hand around his companion's elbow and pulled him along, down to a slow jog now the end was in sight, to where the blond was laid out at the bottom of the elevator. Roughly ripping aside the interlocking steel doors, the pair pulled him out and turned back to the cockpits of their precious Gundams, all four of them stood like ancient statues staring lifelessly at the plain, pale concrete opposite.

"Tro..." Duo began haltingly, the sight of the _fourth_ Gundam just having given him pause. "What... what do we do about Sandrock?"

"You get him into Deathscythe. I'll deal with it." Leaving the prisoner in Duo's strained arms, Trowa stood in front of the beautiful machine. He may not be able to destroy it, even if he wanted to, but he could slow it down. Punching the code they had stolen into the access pad, he walked through the opening doors that lead to the sanctified heart of the beast. Bearing his gun down on the vulnerable yet vital innards, he emptied the entire clip into the unprotected electronic heart, sparks flying everywhere as irreplaceable control boards were shredded. Satisfied that the damage was sufficient, he popped the empty clip on to the floor and slammed another back into place. No need to be careless at this stage.

Turning from the wrecked interior of the mobile suit and noting with satisfaction that Duo was already safely sealed inside Deathscythe, he went about the practiced procedure of entering his own, locking himself down securely in the pilot's seat and ensuring the door was safely sealed.

"Heero, can you hear me? Duo?" He piped out into the radio headset as soon as he was seated.

"I'm pinned down. The doors are opening, but I can't get out. Go, you need to leave me." A big shit thing indeed. Trowa growled and pulled up the exterior cameras on his monitor. True to Heero's word, the hanger doors were opening but the control room was surrounded by Maguanacs. They hadn't seen Duo and himself make the dash for their Gundams. Their lack of resistance had turned into Heero's downfall.

"I'm gonna get you out, Heero." Came Duo's voice over the radio link.

"Negative! If I leave the control room they'll close the doors and trap you. Go, leave me behind."

"Heero..." Duo's voice was cracked with emotion, all the betrayal, all the hopes, all the suffering they had felt over the past day leaking out into that one word. "Try to hold on to something." But all the determination saved for that one sentence.

Crashing free of the gantry, Deathscythe lurched forward with all the uncanny speed the monstrosity could muster, walkways bending, crashing and falling against the side of the metal behemoth. With both arms it reached out towards towards the control room one hand crashing into the Maguanac ranks, scattering them lest they be crushed beneath the heavy fist, the other swiping the walls from the foundations, revealing Heero, shocked as he ever has looked in his life, crouching amidst the shattered beams. When the hand pulled back to Heero, carefully offered palm up, the young teenager quickly jumped on, fingers curling protectively around him as bullets pinged off the cage of digits. In contrast to the gentle handling of their comrade, the other hand balled into a fist and smashed through the control room, finishing the job he started and ruining any chance of closing the doors, bar by risky manual override.

Deathscythe's hand was presented to Wing, like the offering of a pilot to the great machine. Heero wasting no time in joining his fellow pilots in the cockpit of his beloved Gundam, all three turned to the entrance and walked out into the blinding light of the desert.


	13. Chapter 13: Epilogue

Three great shadows travelled over the empty desert plains, shaped like men but far too large, far too angular. Striding in formation, each one silent but for the great thump of their massive feet as they displaced innumerable grains of sand to create their treads.

"How much fuel have we got left?"

They did not speak, the world blind to the discussions of their operators.

"Enough. We can get to Nairobi, there was an outpost there. Underground fuel tanks and supplies most likely."

"Could get us anywhere, as long as we walk and don't fly too much."

Dunes turned into hills, hills turned into the charred and smouldering remains of cities and just as quickly back again. Everywhere nature was hard at work washing away the evidence of civilisation.

"But where do we go from Naibori?"

"Anywhere we can."

* * *

_Author's Notes:_

_Finally, it is finished! Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed, and to those who will read and review in the future!  
Because I had stopped writing for over a year, having drifted away from GW, I did not want to extend the story out to what I had originally planned, which would have included Zechs waking up and Noin (in Nairobi). Wufei was supposed to come in as the main character in the sequel to the story, having stayed in space. I am not sure about writing any further - I don't want to get in the position again of leaving something unfinished. If I do get the inspiration to write, it will likely be one shots posted in this story as chapters after the Epilogue._

_I can't thank enough everyone who has been so kind as to review. There is nothing that makes me feel like opening up a chapter and writing like getting a review in my inbox._


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